


Whispers

by gabsrambles



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, alex and kara's relationship, and I will write that sisterly bond into anything I can I just love them, and alex is the bomb, and lillian is not good, is the best thing ever, kara and lena are kind of a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-09-08 19:27:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 63,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8857855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabsrambles/pseuds/gabsrambles
Summary: Lillian escapes custody just as Lena's figured out who Kara is and kissed her all at the same time. As plots unfold and plans unravel, it's the worst time for Kara to have feelings for Lena Luthor as it becomes unclear if she can even be trusted or not. Everyone says not, but Kara's gut wants to tell her otherwise. As Lillian's plot tries to pull them all under, Lena is dragged into it more than she ever wanted to be.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a prompt, and I based it from after Lena's mother gets put in a police car. It leaves canon from there

“You do something wrong once and no one lets you live it down.”

The words are whispered in her ear and Kara wants to scoop them up and watch them trickle through her fingers. They feel fine, like grains of sand beaten on the beach forever and she isn’t sure she entirely understands which wrong thing Lena is talking about. Kara’s hands are on her hips and she’s standing at the giant glass window in Lena’s office, staring at the night that’s long taken over the sky.

Kara swallows, and tries to remember she’s in her Supergirl outfit. She isn’t Kara Danvers right now. She can’t let herself fall to pieces because a pretty girl is whispering broken phrases in her ear.

“But you did the right thing. In the end.” Kara manages to coat the words in that strength she can drag up, but only when she has the ‘S’ on her chest. The closest she comes to her real voice is when it’s just her and Alex. But lately, she’s slipped, and that tone has carried itself when Lena looks at her from under her lashes.

Or when she bites her lip.

It’s usually accompanied by a swoop, low in Kara’s stomach, that leaves a warmth behind it.

Lena is still standing too close, her chest just brushing Kara’s back, looking over her shoulder to stare at the same skyline as Kara. Too close. Much too close. Kara’s head spins and she sometimes forgets to breathe. The softness is intoxicating.

“This time,” Lena says. And there’s something in her tone that leaves Kara aching. The urge to turn and push Lena backwards into that ridiculous desk she likes to lean on rises up. To press their lips together and piece Lena back together with her tongue. Because she saw that shattered look on Lena’s face. The one that was so subtle, so brief, Kara had wondered if she’d imagined it in the first place, as her mother was escorted into the back of a police car Lena herself had called.

But she can hear it in Lena’s voice now.

Something cracked open. The unsure tone in it, about what she’d done to her mother.

“And you will the next time.” Kara’s an idiot, because she’s let her voice fall, soften. The way the words roll past her tongue is too intimate.

“You’re so sure of that?” Lena’s voice whispers against the back of her neck and Kara closes her eyes.

Then she turns, her arms crossed, and they’re almost nose to nose. Lena’s eyes are a startling green, and they widen at Kara’s fast movement, too fast for her to catch. Kara can hear the way her heart speeds up, a staccato in her chest. It’s distracting.

“I am.”

And Kara really is an idiot, because she means those words. And for what she does next.

Lena is looking at her with a fragile look in her eyes that Kara would never have thought she’d see. Lena is supposed to be anything but fragile. Rather than make her less, it somehow makes her more and Kara’s hands come up, as if on their own accord, and the voice in the back of her head falls silent as her fingers cup soft cheeks and tug them both together.

It was meant to be gentle. But instead it’s hungry, and Lena doesn’t even hesitate. She pushes back, her lips eager and insistent and Kara doesn’t think she’s ever been kissed like this. With desperation on the other person’s tongue and a gasp that’s hers to swallow. It only takes three stumbling steps until Lena’s half sitting on the edge of the desk, nails clinging to Kara’s back. There’s a hand in her hair and when Lena’s fingers tug, Kara’s head falls back as she gasps, the hitch in her breath only worsening as lips brush her neck.

Lena kisses like it’s her last. Like it’s her everything. Like the entire world is built on that moment and Kara doesn’t think she ever wants her to stop.

Teeth scrape her jaw, deliciously hard, and Lena’s tongue soothes it, then she gasps the word, her voice so hoarse Kara throbs with it, “Kara.”

It takes a second.

A long one.

Before Kara stumbles backwards, cold air where before everything had been warm, and stares at Lena, half sprawled on her desk, in a way Kara had thought of more than she’d like to admit.

She’d said Kara. Not Supergirl.

Kara’s heart is pounding against her ribs and Lena’s lips are swollen, kissed red, her hair falling out of its perfect up-do.

Panic is bounding in Kara’s veins and even as Lena raises a hand and tries to sit up, Kara is out the window and flying away, the air cold on her cheeks and a throb still low in her stomach.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to lovely feedback, this accidentally become plot-like.

Kara goes to work the next day like nothing is different, when inside she feels like the universe shifted.

Which is overdramatic. She knows that.

But her head is reeling, and has been all night, and she has no idea how to handle it. Instead of processing, she spent the entire night flying over the city and answering any small whimper she managed to hear. Every time her cape fluttered, the memory crashed into her of Lena’s fingers tangled in it, just for a split second, before her fingers had dug into her back, and Kara would almost fly into something.

“Kara.” The hoarse throaty groan had made Kara throb before reality crashed into her.

How does Lena know?

As Kara, she would never have had the courage to do what she’d done. To let herself fall into the exquisite confusion that was Lena Luthor.

The flirting had become…obvious. Even Kara couldn’t have denied it. There was biting of lips. And looking up at her under lashes. And a tone of voice that always left warmth coursing through Kara’s system. She always left Lena’s office jittery and giggly.

Like she’d been at the start, with James.

Like she’d never been, with Mon’El. She didn’t think she ever could be, really. There was no electricity that trailed after the brush of his fingertips. No heat that Kara felt like she was swallowing at the touch of his lips.

But one kiss from Lena and Kara had felt like she was going to fall to pieces on the office floor.

And why is she obsessing over a kiss when Lena  _Luthor_  knows Kara is  _Supergirl._

“Danvers!”

Kara eeps and spins, adjusting her glasses as Snapper eyes her, his head poking around his office door. “My office. Now.”

She hurries in, clutching her papers to her chest. “Yes?”

“Lena Luthor.”

Kara swallows. “Wh—what about her?”

“You’re close.”

“Uh—c-close?”

The memory of the wet warmth of Lena’s mouth is enough to make Kara shift from foot to foot.

He isn’t even looking at her, just keeps his eyes on a proof on his desk, red pen circling and slashing. She hates that red pen. Her eyes narrow and she quickly relaxes her face when he glances up at her. Heat vision wouldn’t go astray on that red pen.

“Yes. Close. Friends. Bosom buddies and all that. Yes or no?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say—I mean, we’re kind of—I guess I  _know_  her.”

He sighs and pushes his glasses on top of his head. “I want an exclusive with her. She saved the city last night, and Supergirl was involved. This ticks all of your boxes. I want it. Now. Go.”

Kara gapes at him. “I can’t just, she won’t—“

“I’m sorry. Where was the question?”

She snaps her mouth shut. “When do you want it by?”

“An hour ago.”

He goes back to his red pen and Kara wishes it wasn’t against her moral code to freeze him. Just a little puff.

She has a story to write.

 

* * *

 

Instead, she makes Alex meet her for a coffee. Who’s smiling, and keeps staring at her phone and going soft around her eyes.

And Kara’s traitor heart is speeding up as her thoughts bounce from kissing Lena to Lena knowing her identity—sure, she trusts Lena. She does. Really. But her mother runs—ran?—Cadmus and her brother is Kara’s cousin’s nemesis. Knowing Kara’s secret identity is not the best thing for anyone.

This feels like Cat all over again. In too many ways.

That thought is enough to have Kara spiral into confusion again.

But despite all this, she can’t help but smile incredulously at Alex. “You look—happy.”

Alex looks up from her phone, all too quickly, and can’t do anything about the way her eyes are lit up. “Maggie came over last night.”

There’s a rushing sound in Kara’s ears. “Really?” Now she’s really smiling.

“Yeah, and well, there was a speech about kissing the girls you want to kiss, and then there was well…”

Alex is adorably red.

“Kissing?” Kara asks.

Alex nods, taking sip of her coffee. “Yeah.”

And her sister looks so fragile and so happy, Kara feels like her chest inflates just looking at her. “So, she does like you?”

As she should. Everyone should like Alex. The broken look on her face the night Alex had said Maggie wasn’t interested had left a crack in Kara’s chest.

“Apparently.”

“And—and what was all the—“ Kara flaps her hand “—drama for?”

“Reasons. Holding back. But now…”

And Alex grins, so brightly Kara actually has to blink away from it. She doesn’t remember ever seeing Alex smile like that, so openly, like she has something that’s hers, there to hold her up. So Kara smiles with her, like she’s happy for her.

Not like. Because she  _is_. But something in her throat swells—a jealousy—that it’s that easy for Alex. No weight of the world on her shoulders. No double identity—triple identity? Because Kara swears, sometimes, there’s a third one weighing her down. A melding of Supergirl and Kara.

Even a fourth—the one she really is, when all of those are stripped bare.

A fifth. The little girl she left behind on Krypton, obliterated with her parents.

A sixth, the woman who’s learnt her parents aren’t who she thought they were, but still aches with something set deep in her marrow to be with them.

Sometimes, in moments like this, with someone who’s so painfully human, like Alex is, Kara feels the truth of herself crashing over her. It hits her like a tide, the pull of it so strong she almost just wants to let it drag her under. She’s not a part of this world, not truly, not like she was on Krypton.

The problem is, she’s not a part of Krypton anymore, either.

And never will be, ever again.

When she first came to Earth, everything was loud. And bright. The language was harsh in her ears, the consonants a clack over her tongue. Her body thrummed with a charge that had never been there before, clumsy with strength that made her fingers heavy even while everything they touched was light. It had taken so long, to adjust.

But even longer than people had realised.

She’d lay on the roof at night and hold her hand above her head, feeling like her fingers were scraping along the night sky, collecting stardust in their wake. She’d lay and wish she could pull it down and over herself, coat it through her hair and swallow it—anything to make herself feel like she was closer to her parents, her family, her friends, her house, her planet, than she actually was.

It was those nights, the universe huge and expansive over her head, that the loss of them all would ring the truest, the simple lack of them coursing through her, coating her insides and layering itself in the fibres of her muscles.

Muscles that didn’t even feel Kryptonian anymore—they didn’t feel like her own. Nothing did, in this world with a sun that treated her like a battery.

Some of those nights, Alex found her. Clambering up to lay beside her, their hands together between them. She wouldn’t offer words, just her presence. She knew, by then, how Kara would flinch from things so easily. Things that Alex wasn’t even aware of. She’d heard Jeremiah once say to Alex that you could see an entire planet lost in Kara’s eyes, and it was around then she tried to go with smiling to stop people seeing how deep that loss went.

She thought, if she smiled enough, maybe it would feel real.

“I’m so happy for you.” Kara smiles and leans over the table to wrap Alex in a hug, used to, by now, measuring her strength so she doesn’t hurt her. The way Alex squeezes back, Kara knows she full of joy.

She’d left James behind, unsure of who she is and what she’s doing. She doesn’t have time for Lena Luthor, of all people. Not only the time, she doesn’t have the  _life_  for her. How would she fit in, between Kara Danvers and Supergirl?

The sound of her mobile makes Kara jump back. A text message.

 

_I now needed that story two hours ago._

 

“Everything okay?”

Kara nodded, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, because her glasses slide down her nose and Alex gives her a skeptical look. “Oh, yeah. Fine. I have to get back to work.” Because nothing would make that joy in Alex’s eye fade faster than knowing that Lena Luthor knows Supergirl’s secret identity.

“Really? How were you, after yesterday? You flew off after the debriefing.”

Kara is already standing, gathering her bag and overdoing the fumbling of it. Her hair falls like a curtain around her face. She’s a terrible liar. As much as she protests, she knows that. It’s truth Kara knows how to spill, big words wrapped up in messages people don’t want to hear yet need to. But sometimes that can be too dangerous.

“Oh, fine. I heard some cries for help.”  _After_  Lena made her tremble with a kiss Kara instigated as Supergirl, and then revealed she knew who Supergirl really was.

“All okay?”

“Yeah. A couple of muggings. No alien activity.”

“Okay.” Alex is blinking up at her with her big knowing brown eyes and Kara needs to flee, now.

“See you soon?” Kara asks.

“Yeah.” Suspicion coats her words.

“Alex?” Kara pauses and looks Alex in the eye, properly.

“Yeah?”

“I really am happy for you.” There’s that tight feeling in Kara’s throat again. She is happy. Genuinely.

“Me too.” And Alex practically glows.

That lump is swelling and Kara flees. She takes the bus, letting the press of people suffocate this feeling out of her. She doesn’t want to see Lena. Something in her is thrumming, vibrating, and Kara thinks she may just tremble apart if Lena looks at her a certain way.

She can do this.

She stands in front of L Corp with her hands on her hips and takes a deep breath. Then quickly drops her hands and rests them on the strap of her bag, instead. Kara Danvers. Not Supergirl.

Reporting. That’s what she does. She can do this and be professional. And, hopefully, they can just pretend the night before never happened.

The secretary leads her straight through and Kara follows her in. Lena stands from her desk, a smile stretching her lips.

“Kara. Well, I must say this is a surprise.”

That smile has a hesitancy to it, and the door clicks shut as the secretary leaves them to it.

“Good morning, Miss Luthor.”

Lena actually flinches. She leans forward slightly, her fingers steepling against her desk and Kara’s eyes dart down to them and back up to eyes that the night before she’d felt like she would drown in. That desk is the bane of Kara’s existence. She’s thought, again and again, of Lena against it and never thought she’d come close to the reality. And then last night, Lena had sat on it, Kara’s hands wrapped in her hair and—

“I thought we’d agreed on Lena?”

Kara smiles, adjusting her glasses. “Lena. Good morning.”

There is a second of stony silence, Lena’s head cocking. “Please, take a seat.”

So Kara does. Lena stays standing for just a second, and Kara swallows heavily as she looks up at her. In this position, Lena is all she sees, her silhouette against the brightness of the window. She lets out a slow breath when Lena finally sits.

“Well then…Kara. What can I do for you?”

She seems so calm, on the outside. Cool demeanour, elegantly crossed legs, leaning back in her chair as if without a care. But Kara can hear her heart, faster than normal, beating a rhythm Kara heard last night.

She’d dreamed of that beat.

“I’d like to do an interview.”

“An interview.” Lena blinks. “Right. And I’m to guess this is about last night?”

“The story’s out.”

“What story, Kara?”

“What—what do you mean?”

“I mean—what story. What would you know of what went on last night?” Lena’s lips are curved upwards, just a little, and Kara wants to kiss it off her.

“I—it broke, the story. Overnight. It’s all over the news. Witnesses, the police issued a statement about the bomb over the city.”

“Of course. And you know nothing else about it?”

Lena won’t break her eye contact. And neither will Kara. They stare at each other, over the desk and Kara suddenly stands. “I have to go.”

“You just arrived. And you have an article you need to write. Don’t be silly. Sit.” For a split second, Kara almost obeys. But Lena is just staring at her and Kara can’t be there. She’s about to crumble. So Kara keeps standing. Slowly, Lena stands too, unfolding from her chair like a goddess. She moves like royalty, her place in every room always assured. It’s something Kara has been envious of since they met. Something she hasn’t doubted until she saw Lena falter around her mother.

Kara juts her chin out and rests a hand on the desk, leaning over it.

“You need to stop,” she says, her voice low. Kara Danvers is not in her tone anymore.

“Stop what?” Lena leans forward, a foot of space between them. That pulse is beating faster and Kara suddenly can’t smell anything but Lena. Soap, a citrus shampoo, her warmth even holds a scent.

“Whatever this is.”

“There she is.” Lena is grinning and Kara is lost.

“What?”

Lena straightens and walks around the desk. Kara wants to move. To walk out and write something Snapper is sure to reject, but she’s rooted to the spot and all she can do is turn, and suddenly Lena’s in her space again. Kara steps back, the back of her thighs hitting the desk and Lena steps in front of her.

“Why did you leave?”

“Why do you think?” Kara bites out.

Lena is grinning and it’s such a contrast to how Kara feels, anger blooms in her stomach. Confusion and frustration. And Lena is just staring at Kara’s mouth.

When Lena kisses her, Kara wants to push her away. To press her hands against her chest and shove her backwards and reel out of the room. To storm away and make out that Kara Danvers is insulted by this, even if Supergirl isn’t.

Proof they aren’t one and the same.

But when she raises her hands, she’s bunching Lena’s silk blouse in her fists, yanking them harder together. Lena’s breath huffs against her cheek and her lips part, teeth nipping at Kara’s bottom lip.

Someone groans, and Kara couldn’t say which one of them it is.

There are fingers in her hair, trailing over her cheek and resting against her heart. She parts her legs and uses her foot as leverage to push herself backwards to sit on the desk fully, Lena wasting no time to slip as close as she can. When Lena’s tongue slides over her own, Kara forgets her own name.

She forgets Supergirl and Kara, the six or more of herself she feels she is. She forgets a planet that caved in on itself and left her and her cousin alone. She forgets that space makes her feel lonely and that there are times she sees an explosion too big to be anything but her home and everything she knew behind her eyelids. She forgets her parents and her shame.

Her hand falls to Lena’s hip, tugging her closer and Kara wants nothing more than to disappear into this forever. There’s a hand still over her heart and the other is wrapped around her neck, gentle and soothing, and the lips on her own slow down. The frenzy fades and the kiss deepens, lips tugging gently and mouths moving against each other. When Lena’s nose brushes against Kara’s and she pulls back, she rests their foreheads together, their breath mingling between them.

And, piece by piece, Kara comes back to herself.

“If I wasn’t sure last night.” Lena’s voice is hoarse, low. It whispers over Kara’s lips and she wants nothing more than to push forward and kiss her again. To stop whatever is going to come out of her mouth next. “I am now.”

“How long have you known?” Kara won’t open her eyes. Because if she doesn’t then she can pretend this isn’t happening.

“Awhile. I felt sure last night.” Lena brushes their cheeks together, and her lips whisper just below Kara’s ear. A shiver crawls down her spine and it’s not entirely unpleasant. “When you were knocked against that sign. There was a look you gave me, and it was pure Kara Danvers.” There’s a tongue, on her pulse point and Kara’s fingers flex on Lena’s hip, who rolls against Kara and elicits a gasp. She can feel Lena smile against her neck. It’s intoxicating, how much Kara is aware of even with her eyes closed. The subtle touches, the heartbeat, the dip and rise of her whispered words. “But I started to piece it together when I realised I was attracted to both Kara Danvers and Supergirl.”

Kara slips her the tips of her fingers under the hem of Lena’s blouse, the skin above her pants smooth and warm. She strokes her fingers against the strip of skin and Lena’s teeth are scraping over her collarbone.

Kara should be panicked, like last night. This isn’t good. It’s laced with complications, issues, problems.

But right then, with Lena’s length pressed against her and her lips sucking her skin, all of that seems far away.

Footsteps.

Kara’s eyes fly open and she pushes Lena backwards, gently, a nudge—too much and Lena could go flying. Lena’s eyes are wide, her face filled with a question and Kara quickly flies up and back to stand behind Lena’s desk.

“Someone’s coming.”

Lena is staring at her still, perhaps the shock of seeing Kara Danvers fly and not Supergirl, for all she says she knows. Then she blinks and straightens her hair and Kara raises a trembling hand to fix her own collar.

“You have lipstick, here.” Lena indicates near her own neck and Kara swipes at it just in time for the door to burst open.

It didn’t even occur to her to use her vision to stare through it. Her brain is a mess, a whirl of touch and shock.

Alex leads a group of agents through. She barely takes in Kara, before her eyes are back on Lena.

“Ms Luthor.”

“Is everything alright?” Lena asks.

Lena’s the picture of composure and Kara lets herself sink into the fact that here, Kara’s not Supergirl. She folds her arms and hunches her shoulders and looks concerned.

“No.” Alex glances at Kara, then back to Lena. “Your mother escaped. We have concerns she may come after you, after last night.”

Lena straightens, one eyebrow rising. She barely flinches.

But Kara sees it. The flash in her eye. The panic in the green.

“I see.”

“We need you to come with us,” Alex says. “For protection.”

 


	3. Why

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is completely running away with me--this was not supposed to be more than just a oneshot, damn it. Your comments have been so thoughtful and motivating. Reading them has really inspired me to write more, so thank you! Hope you continue to enjoy.

Kara quickly snaps her mouth shut. How? How could Lillian escape? How could she? She was being held in the police station until processing. It doesn’t get much more secure than that.

Unless… Her eyes widen and she swallows down the ghosting feeling of Lena’s lips, and really  _looks_  at Alex. There’s a streak of red over both cheeks, a muscle in her jaw clenching. Focused, yes. But angry.

“How, may I ask, did my mother escape a supposedly secure facility?” Lena is all cocky fury and cold, raised eyebrows.

 Alex’s hand is flexing at her side. “There was a bomb involved. We believe Hank Henshaw was seen.”

“Casualties?” Kara asks. There’s a racing feeling in her chest and, not for the first time, she wishes she could see people’s thoughts and not just through objects.

Alex is wired, drawn tight as a bow.

When Alex looks at her, her eyes are like ice. “Several. They’re still getting it under control. We were dispatched here immediately.”

There’s a plea in her eyes. Kara knows it. She looks from Lena, whose arms are folded and is staring at Alex and not even looking towards Kara, and back to her sister.

“Well, uh—this seems like a really, interesting story.” Kara starts stumbling around the desk. Her hand drags over the surface, exactly where Lena sat last night and she has the urge to leave it pressed there, to see if she can soak up any warmth left over. There’s not time, though. She has no idea if she’s happy or annoyed at the interruption they just had. “I should go, write it up. At the building, where I’m a reporter…”

Lena is safe with Alex. Kara hopes. Because Alex looks pissed, and a pissed Alex can be a dangerous thing. Kara tries to catch Lena’s eye, but she’s steadfastly ignoring Kara as if she hadn’t just been pressed so close nothing could fit between them.

But Kara has somewhere to be. Reason one thousand she should not be kissing Lena Luthor, or anyone. Her life is too chaotic, messy. She’s constantly caught up in something new, something more. She sidles out the room and once past the secretary—half hovering out of her seat, gaze glued through her boss’s door—Kara walks down an abandoned passage, pulls her shirt off in a nanosecond and is out a window and flying to the precinct, cape billowing behind her.

Maggie is there. Kara can feel it. Alex had looked jittery, cloaked in her DEO mask, but something itching at her seams. She’s worried, and orders stopped her checking in.

It only takes a minute to get there. Less, really. How had she not heard the blast?

Too wrapped up in other things.

Things that didn’t even cast a look at her as she left.

Not that Kara cares.

Chaos. Kara arrives to utter chaos. There are flashing lights and smoke and flame licking up the building. People in uniform are everywhere, scurrying all over the place. The flames are out of control, an entire side of the building missing from the blast.

She sucks in air to freeze-blow it, but pauses. There could still be people inside, and freeze breath could kill them, if they were still alive. Swooping low, she hovers over the fire chief. The relief that breaks over his face at the sight of her is almost palpable.

“Is everyone out?” she calls, voice raised over the cacophony of shouting, engines and sirens.

“We can’t be sure—but we can’t get close enough to check now, the buildings just been deemed too dangerous for us to get in.”

For them, maybe. Kara rises into the air and then flies through the front door, still attached. The entrance is full of smoke, but surprisingly unscathed. She darts through, around desks, a blur to anyone else, and stops in the hall that leads to the holding cells.

It’s smokey, firey rubble. Thick, billowing blackness lit up by the brightness of the fire.

A mess of twisted metal beams and sparking wires, flame burning so hot even Kara flinches away. The crackle of it is loud. Too loud. Kara closes her eyes and focuses. Centres herself. Still the crackle. The background noise from outside, sobbing and someone screaming. The smell of burning. It’s strong in her nose, overpowering and rancid. Someone was burnt. Badly. But they’re not here anymore.

Then there it is. One heartbeat, plus the sound of coughing, to her left. Further from the flames.

Kara opens her eyes and in an instant is pulling up a beam.

Maggie’s trapped under it, blinking up with streaming eyes at Kara. Soot smudges her face “Supergirl.”

“Detective.” Kara lifts another beam, freeing Maggie’s leg. There’s no blood. She wants to quip that she can’t leave Kara’s sister alone, but that’s not possible. Supergirl doesn’t know. Kara will have to give her a glare later. Or that smile that had made Maggie squirm in the bar. “Why are you even working today? You’re injured.”

Kara scoops her up and flies them out a hole in the roof, the fresh air cool and clean.

“You know us workaholic types.”

Kara turns in the air and hovers over the building. She heaves in that breath and blows it over the flames, freezing breath spilling out until the fire is out, steam and smoke rising.

Cheering rings out as the flames are extinguished and Maggie huffs. “Great job—but I’m feeling a little damsel-y in this position?”

Kara grins and lowers them to the ground, putting Maggie down on an ambulance gurney. “Nothing wrong with being a damsel, Detective.”

Maggie winces as she adjusts herself and a paramedic flits around her. Diane, one Kara’s seen multiple times on scene. “I’m fine.” Maggie waves her away and Kara rolls her eyes.

“Take the oxygen.” She narrows her eyes until Maggie lets them fit the mask over her face. The last thing Kara needs is telling Alex she watched as her girlfriend—or whatever Maggie is—

 passed out from smoke inhalation. “That’s a girl.”

Maggie actually glares at her, which not many people have the gall to do when Kara’s standing in full Supergirl pose, framed with a smokey sky and hair wafting around her face. “I suppose I should say thank you.”

“Say it by telling me what happened here?”

Sighing, Maggie leans against the raised back of the gurney. “I came in to speak to Lillian Luthor. We left her to stew overnight, and she was due for processing today. I walked through the door to the holding cells and had barely taken a step in when I was blown backwards. I think I hit my head, because everything was blurry after that.” That would explain how she was missed by the rescue crews that got anyone else out, if she was passed out and covered in debris. “So, I’m afraid I can’t tell you much else.”

“I can.” Kara turns and the chief of police gives her a nod, his face grim. “I was outside when it happened. Saw the entire thing. Big man, silver on his face, dragging Lillian away. He laid the bomb perfectly, just her cell at the back was clear.”

Hank Henshaw. Kara grinds her teeth. So it’s definitely true.

“Thank you, Chief. Can I do anything else here?” Kara looks around, the emergency services doing all things she’s no good at. She needs to let Alex know what’s happened. She needs to be hunting for Lillian Luthor. She needs to get an article to Snapper. She needs to  _not_  be thinking if Lena is okay, knowing her mother is on the loose.

“We’re all good, Supergirl. Thank you.”

Kara turns back to Maggie, who’s feeling around in her pockets, ignoring the frustrated Diane who’s trying to shine a torch in her eyes, asking her if anything hurts.

“Lost something?”

She looks crestfallen. “My phone.” Her gaze falls on the ruined side of the precinct. “I think it’s gone.”

Kara winces. “I’d say so.” She can’t resist. “Important someone to let know you’re okay?”

Say yes, or else. Kara may just flick her in the arm. Which will hurt.

There’s a weird, dopey smile on Maggie’s face and she doesn’t stop staring at the ruins. “I think so.”

Think? Kara huffs. Think will have to do. That smile is smitten enough. She supposes.

“Well, I hope you feel better, Detective.” Kara’s arms raise and she goes to fly off when a hand on her cape stops her. She looks down, and Maggie is staring straight up at her, fingers still curled around her cape. There’s something genuine in her eye, and Kara thinks that maybe she’ll be okay for Alex, after all.

“Thank you.”

The sincerity in those words, every time they’re directed at Kara, leaves her breathless. She gives Maggie a smile, and a nod. Her hand falls away and Kara is up in the air, bursting through clouds to hover amongst them.

The first thing she does is pull her phone out from her bra, her coms not in her ear since nothing about this was planned. Hovering over the city amongst the clouds, she hits speed dial 1.

“Danvers.” Alex’s voice is terse.

“Alex, it’s me.”

“What—“

“Maggie’s fine.”

There’s a breath let out over the phone, and Kara can just imagine the relief that would be flooding Alex’s face. “Thank you.”

“She’s a little banged up, but she’ll be okay. Her phone was destroyed.”

“I tried to call. I thought—“

“I know. But she’s fine.” Kara lets her hand trail through the mist of cloud she’s in. It’s intangible, ungraspable. Untouchable. Beautiful, in a way that people shouldn’t get to touch.

Like Lena.

Except Kara had been touching her just thirty minutes ago. Panting lips had been along her neck and Kara has no idea what she’s doing.

“Kara?”

She blinks and lets her hand fall from the cloud. “Sorry, yeah?”

“I said we have a problem.”

Kara freezes. “Beyond Hank Henshaw blowing up the precinct and unleashing Lillian?”

“Yeah. Lena won’t come in with us.”

Kara actually drops a foot in the air, her arm throwing up as if she can catch herself. “What?”

“She won’t come in with us. She insists her mother will have zero interest in contacting her and that she can arrange her own protection.”

“But… Is she stupid?”

“I don’t know Kara. She’s  _your_  friend.” Alex lowers her voice, “I don’t—I don’t trust her. We weren’t just bringing her in for protection.”

They weren’t?

“But Alex, she saved the city.”

Alex sighed and the sound made Kara want to hang up on her. It was her frustrated, ‘my sister is so naïve’ sigh. “She did. Conveniently.”

“What?”

“Kara, she could be colluding with her mother still. She may have even helped with this escape. We can’t be sure.”

There was no way Lena is doing that. Kara had seen the dash of disgust and pain in her eyes at the mere mention of her mother. The conflict. The confusion.

The conflict.

No. Lena is  _not_  doing that. Kara is sure of one thing, and that’s it. Conflict or no, Lena saved them all.

“And the fact that she doesn’t want to come into protection is fishy,” Alex adds.

“Fishy? Or stupid?”

“Maybe both.”

Why would Lena refuse protection?

 

* * *

 

Kara lands on the balcony and lets it happen with a little more force than she would normally. A split calculation, a control of her speed, and it shudders, just slightly. Her jaw is set, chin jutting out. There’s something bubbling in her veins, an itching anger that probably has to do with Lena being an idiot, and many other things that have nothing to do with the fact that she declined protection.

Alex’s words ring in her ears. The DEO doesn’t entirely trust Lena.

The protection hasn’t been offered just for Lena. But so they could keep an eye on her.

The doors unlocked, and Kara steps through smoothly, no hint of Kara Danvers in Supergirl’s movement. She pauses inside. Lena is facing the window, a tumbler of something brown in her hand. It’s only just gone twelve. She would have seen Kara’s landing. Watched her come through the door. Or maybe she didn’t see that part. She’s staring fixedly out over the city, the glass raised to rest just near her chin. In profile, she’s stunning, and Kara hates that it’s the first thing she really thinks. The curve of her mouth, the slope of her cheekbones. Kara had ran her lips over them. And heard Lena gasp against her ear.

And now she almost looks unrecognisable; like the woman Kara first met. Or the one who’d stared at her with blazing eyes and told Kara that Lena had thought she was different. Had asked how long until Kara comes after her.

The cracking, shaky breath as Kara had stormed passed her.

Lena doesn’t turn to her. Just takes a slow sip of her drink, the ice clinking in the silence of the office, and then rests the glass back against her shoulder. The sun is lighting her up and Kara doesn’t know why she flew here, really. Why she cares.

There’s so many other things she needs to be doing. Her phone hasn’t stopped vibrating, Snapper’s texts lighting the screen up. J’onn’s called her, presumably to come in and start the hunt for Lillian.

Instead she’s here.

Kara takes a step and turns, her cape whipping around her, and leans against the desk, crossing her arms and staring at Lena’s back, the slight profile of her face still visible from one side.

Neither speaks.

Lena takes another sip.

The city is alight, washed in the sun. It’s bright enough for others to need to squint. Starkly different to the darkness that shrouded it last night from this same spot, the lights splitting the skyline up like the stars in the sky overhead.

Kara has no idea which she prefers: the light that seeps into her muscles, her bones, her cells and atoms, that leaves her thrumming with energy she’s still learning to control. Or the night, reminding her of the space that stretches outwards, filled with stars that don’t match the ones she called home.

The world leaves an ache in her chest, so often sometimes Kara almost forgets to put that smile on her face. A heaviness falls into her limbs, nothing to do with the sun, and she gets the urge to tear the feeling out from behind her ribs. Sometimes Alex can soothe it. They sit side by side on her sofa, and Kara loses herself in the way her sister brings a comfort, even as she feels breathless with the loss of something so long passed she’s not sure she can even name it. Other times, she flies at night. She skims as close to the stars as she can, remembering nights on the roof with her hand stretched towards them, and feels no closer than she did back then, to being where her heart longs for.

The silence is still in the room. Occasionally, there’s the clinking of ice.

Finally, Lena speaks. Kara actually blinks, it’s so unexpected. Like a glass falling on tile, shattering out of nowhere. “Your sister suspects me.”

That makes her blink again. It’s unsettling, to hear someone call Alex her sister when Kara’s there as Supergirl. As if it puts Alex a step closer to danger; as if someone can use her to get to the woman wearing Supergirl’s outfit.

“Of what?”

“Colluding with my mother.”

Kara’s arms stay folded, but her eyes are on the slight arc of Lena’s cheek and chin, the side flutter of her eye. All she can see from this angle. “Did she say as much?”

“She didn’t need to, Kara.” Kara winced, her name on someone’s lips when she’s Supergirl is just so wrong. She feels stripped bare. “You don’t like that?”

How does Lena know? She can’t see her. Kara means to lie, to fob it off, but instead other words slip out. Truth, whispered. “It feels like I’m naked.”

“Vulnerable.”

Heat courses in Kara’s blood, and she has no idea why. It mingles with the anger still there, the melancholy that’s been creeping through her arteries for no reason she can name.

“Exactly,” Kara murmurs. Lena has still hardly moved.

“Okay.” And Lena is murmuring too. “Alex didn’t need to say as much, Supergirl.”

Yet that doesn’t fit, either. Not now. Not after two stolen kisses that couldn’t even be called two, they went on so long, held too much. A name that’s a barrier isn’t right from Lena’s lips, anymore.

“Does she have reason to suspect you?” And Kara’s voice holds something hard. A note she can’t get rid of.

There’s an imperceptible movement, as Lena straightens. “There you go again. Lording above. Suspecting me because I’m a Luthor, and nothing more.”

“I don’t suspect you.” That hard note is still there, hard, and Kara’s saying too much, she knows. Too much the DEO wouldn’t approve of. Definitely too much that Alex wouldn’t like. Even Kara doesn’t like it. But the words spill out anyway. “I don’t.”

And Lena turns, a rapid movement. Her hair is out, long down her back, and it flicks around her shoulders like liquid. Those eyes are fixed on her, a vibrant green. Vivid and raging, and Kara knows she should look from that spark but instead she meets it head on. It intrigues her, drags her in. Lena is a puzzle Kara has no idea how to solve, and her fingers itch to sink into it, to sort it out and see what she’s left with.

She just doesn’t know  _why_.

“And why don’t you, Kara?” The name is back but Kara doesn’t care, because Lena is looking at her with desperation in her eye and the same lacing her syllables, rising through her voice.  There’s something else in her expression, but Kara doesn’t know what, and that feeling is in her fingertips again.

But Kara doesn’t have an answer, and Lena is looking at her like it’s all she wants. So Kara leans forward, her fingers grasping the expensive material of that tastefully low-cut blouse for the second time that day, and tugs, so gently Lena could pull away if she wanted.

She doesn’t though.

Lena lets herself fall into Kara, and their lips come together with something more practiced, now. Kara tilts her chin up and Lena’s breath washes over her, intoxicating and sweet as bourbon. Her hand still grasps Lena’s shirt, pressed tight between their bodies. The other is in Lena’s hair, and it feels as fluid as it looks, strands of silk between Kara’s fingers. Teeth nip her lip and the groan that drags out of Kara is a rumble in her chest and Lena echoes it, pushing Kara back onto the desk, her knees coming up either side of Kara’s hips.

It’s intoxicating, surrounded by Lena to this extent. Fingers are grasping over her back, tangled in her cape, tugging at her shoulders, and Kara wonders if they should stop. If either of them really know what they’re doing.

But Lena’s tongue is against Kara’s, her panting warm and wet, and Kara could sob with the desperation building in her stomach.

She doesn’t even know if that desperation is Lena’s, or her own.

 


	4. Break Apart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This wasn´t going to be updated for a week, because life. But you´ve all been so great with the comments and kudos and I was all inspired so this happened. Thanks so much, everyone, your feedback has been so appreciated. Also, please note this is now a higher rating. Which was also not supposed to happen. Oops.

There’s a tongue in Kara’s mouth, warm and soft and stroking, and Kara shudders, her hands grasping at Lena’s hips. They should stop—the world is starting to fall around them, Lena’s mother is somewhere, plotting. Kara’s phone has vibrated constantly against her chest, a mix of Alex, J’onn and Snapper.

But instead, she grasps her fingers into softness and tugs Lena tighter against her, a gasp ghosting over her lips. Her thoughts are full of the sound of Lena’s heartbeat, the hips under her hands and the feeling of slowly unravelling surrounded by her. Lena’s arm is thrown over Kara’s shoulders, tugging her close, and her knees must be aching against the desktop, but Lena is a force of nature: unstoppable. Her other hand slides down over Kara’s neck, her fingertips skimming along the edge of her Supergirl outfit. Then they’re fumbling, digging under it and Lena tugs Kara’s phone free, vibrating once more, and pulls back, just, barely a foot of space between them. Kara swallows. There is nothing more she wants than to close that gap and keep kissing her. Lena’s lips are swollen, her hair mussed around her head. And slowly, unfurling like she’s been hiding it, Lena grins.

“Do you need this?” She holds the phone between them with two fingers. The screen’s lit up. But Kara can’t break that eye contact—doesn’t want to for anything.

Yes. She does need it. There’s so much she needs to be doing. But she smiles, and it doesn’t feel as fragile as the feeling in her chest. “No.”

Lena leans back, slightly, trusting Kara’s hands on her hip and waist to hold her steady. The phone thuds softly on the chair, the fabric absorbing any sound the vibrating makes. Kara can hear it, still. But she has the feeling she’ll soon be able to ignore it.

With slow movement—Kara measures her strength subconsciously, all the time—Kara’s hand leaves Lena’s hip, the other sneaking further around her waist, fingers digging into the small of her back, creeping under her shirt. Her skin is impossibly soft, smooth and Kara wants to lose herself in it. To trace her fingers over more than that small patch, to run her tongue along Lena’s spine and see how fast she shivers.

Her other hands slides over Lena’s cheek. With a soft flutter, Lena’s eyes close, her face turning, so slightly, into Kara’s palm. Kara’s fingers dance over her ear, the skin just behind it, and she trails them down her cheek, the tip of her index finger stopping over her lips. Warm breath washes over it and Kara’s mouth drops open, just slightly. Lena is a picture, straddling her, the sun bursting behind her. When Lena’s lips part, she opens her eyes at the same time and Kara aches, as she takes the digit into her mouth, her tongue flicking over it, and sucks. Kara surges forward, her hand falling to rest on Lena’s chest, her heart a drum against her palm, and kisses her so hard Kara wonders if they’ll both shatter.

It’s not gentle, anymore.

There are teeth and scraping nails, a hand digging into the back of Kara’s neck. Kara’s fingers glide over ribs, her fingers trembling as she yanks at buttons. Lena’s shirt is finally open, and Kara wants to pull back to stare. To drink her in and run her eyes over the skin she’s exposed, the fabric of her bra, to watch her chest rising with her breath. But that would mean breaking the kiss, and Kara’s lost in it: in the tug of her lips, the pant of her breath. The way Lena holds her to her, as if she thinks at any moment Kara may disappear.

“Please,” pants into Kara’s mouth and she has to shift her hips, anything to relieve the ache that sound sends throbbing between her legs. “Please.”

Lena’s hips are rolling, seeking friction from Kara’s stomach and Kara can’t stop herself. Her hand flicks at the button of Lena´s pants, the zip pulling down almost on its own. It’s an impossible angle, an uncomfortable twist of her wrist, but it’s worth it, when she pushes past the waistband of satin underwear and her fingers glide through wetness and warmth. Lena gasps and Kara groans, their lips tearing apart as Lena’s head lolls back. Kara doesn’t stop her stroking fingers, her teeth grazing the pulse point she can feel under her mouth, and the rhythm of Lena’s hips against her guide her movements.

“Kara.” And her name turns into a grunt that sends a gush of warmth through Kara as she slips a finger inside. “More.”

So she does.

The skin under Kara's lips tastes like salt, and she swipes her tongue from Lena’s collarbone to behind her ear, Lena’s entire body arching into her. Her hand cups the back of Lena’s head, two fingers curling now, and if given the opportunity right then, she’d stay here forever.

Hands are in Kara's hair, and one falls to clutch her shoulders. In that moment, she hates her impenetrable skin: she wants Lena´s marks on her, to carry a reminder of this for later.

Lena’s head falls back down, her lips desperate on Kara’s and with a swipe of Kara’s thumb, her forehead drops to Kara’s shoulder, her teeth biting hard as she comes, without a single sound.

In the still of the moment after, Lena’s breathing heavy and loud across her collarbone, Kara blinks out the window, the reflection off windows outside glinting into her eyes.

She has no idea what she just did and why she did it, but there’s no intention to move, to break whatever delicate thing has grown between them. When Lena lifts her head, its slow, her mouth, parted, grazing up Kara’s neck until she’s kissing Kara again, who closes her eyes to the world to stop the thoughts that have just started to intrude. It’s languid, filled with something there’s no name for, and Lena’s hand is on her chest, pushing.

Kara could easily resist it. And as if Lena knows, there’s no insistence, more an invitation in the gentle pressure. But Kara lets herself lay back, her hair spilling over the edge of the desk and Lena still straddling her, Kara’s hand still in her underwear. Lena’s lips move past her mouth, along her jaw, teeth nip at her neck, and Lena’s tongue swipes at the hollow between her collarbones. As she moves down Kara’s body, Kara hates her suit, the face that Lena can’t move it aside to get to her skin like desperate fingers are clearly trying to do. Instead, her hands move up Kara’s thighs and Lena must step off the desk because there’s warmth breathing along the inside of her thigh and Kara lifts a leg up, her heel pressing into the edge of the desk, her hands in Lena’s hair. Lips ghost over her underwear and she could sob with the feel of it. Her hips roll as if on their own accord and fingers splay over her hip to hold her down and Kara swears she hears Lena chuckle.

“Lena.” Her voice is hoarse in her own ears and when Lena’s tongue swipes over her through her underwear, Kara’s breath hitches in her chest, her hand grasping at Lena’s head, the other lifting up to grab the edge of the desk next to her head.

The knocking at the door is loud. Insistent. Two harsh wraps of knuckles Kara wouldn’t mind breaking right then.

They both freeze, and the knock sounds again.

She sits up and Lena falls back on her heels. For a split second, they blink at each other and Kara wants that image in her head forever: Lena staring up at her, her hair sex-messy, lips parted and lipstick kissed off, her shirt splayed open, black bra on show. Her green eyes are glass, pupils blown wide.

Then she’s standing, fingers at her buttons and Kara’s pushing herself off her desk, her cheeks burning. Red is blotching over Lena’s chest and it’s covered, button by button until just a hint of it creeping up her neck is left. She scrapes her fingers through her hair and Kara copies the motion, her heart racing. She grabs her phone and shoves it back in down her suit, in her bra and turns on her heel, narrowing her eyes.

“It’s your secretary.” She doesn’t recognise her own voice. “She’s about to knock again.”

And she does.

“I told her not to disturb me. It must be important.” Lena isn’t looking at her and Kara can’t blame her.

“Are you safe, here?” Kara asks. She’s already moving towards the door, swallowing heavily and wondering if what they just did had been pure escapism or something that had been building since they met.

Maybe it’s both.

“I doubled security and your sister left operatives downstairs.”

Lena’s fixed her pants, the button done up.

“I should go,” Kara says.

Lena gives a sharp nod. “Of course.”

And Kara watches her, for a second, as she wheels her chair towards herself and sits.

She’s completely composed, as if she’s been sitting there the entire time. She doesn’t look back at Kara.

So Kara leaves the way she comes, into the blinding sunlight, just as she hears Lena call, “Come in.”

 

* * *

 

Kara zips around the building and back in through a window to grab her clothes where she’d hidden them behind a potted plant. She goes back to work, her thoughts jumbling through her head. All she can smell is Lena, on her hand, in her hair—all over herself, and it’s distracting: delicious and dangerous.

“Where the hell have you been, Danvers.”

She adjusts her glasses and drops her hand quickly away from her face. She needs to shower if she’s not going to be driven to the point of distraction today. And it’s going to be a long day. Her phone is still vibrating in her bag.

Work first, to get her boss of her back. Then the DEO and Supergirl duties.

Snapper is glaring at her from his desk and she lets herself flinch away from it, even as she smiles at him nervously. “I was interviewing Lena Luthor, like you asked, when she was told her mother has escaped.”

He narrowed his eyes. “She escaped?”

Kara nodded, probably too enthusiastically. “She did. The precinct was—“

“Blown up. Of course we knew that. We have a crew down there already. Supergirl saved the day, and the life of one of their detectives.”

“She did?” Kara asks. Habit to keep a cover.

“Mhm. But there’s been no statement about her mother.”

“That means we have an exclusive.” The smile on her face grows.

“Well?”

“What?”

“Write it!”

Kara practically jumps and runs out of the room. Maybe the DEO will have to wait. She sits at her desk and pulls her keyboard towards herself, opening up a clean document.

How to spin it?

Her phone is still going. Kara sighs and answers it.

“Where the hell have you been?” Alex asks.

Buried in Lena Luthor. “I had to yell at Lena.”

“Did you convince her to accept our protection?”

Kara glances around to ensure no one is listening, narrowing her eyes and checking beyond her walls. Clear. “Protection _and_ surveillance you mean.”

“Yes.” Alex is all business.

Sighing, Kara shakes her head even though Alex can’t see it. “No. She wants to stay as she is. She insists she’s fine. And she knows you left some operatives.”

“But what about when she’s at home?”

“I don’t know, Alex. Maybe you’ll have speak to her. I can’t convince her of any of this.”

“Maybe you can’t, but Supergirl could.”

Oh yeah. Alex doesn’t known Lena knows. And it should probably stay like that.

Kara hates keeping things from Alex.

“I was Supergirl when I went.”

“Oh. Then maybe Kara can convince her.”

Ugh. This was horrible. “I can try.” Her voice is too high. “Anyway, do you know why J’onn’s calling?”

“He wants you to come by the base asap to discuss Cadmus and Lillian Luthor.”

“Okay. Can it hold for an hour? If I can get this article done, it’ll be easier for me to be Supergirl for the rest of the day.”

“That should be fine. I’ll let him know.”

Kara sighs, relieved. One less thing. “Have you seen Maggie?”

“Yes.” It’s breathy. Alex is so far gone. “She’s fine, bruised but okay. She’s mostly pissed she’s been sent home for the day. Not that she should have been at work today anyway.”

“Are you going there tonight?”

Alex sighed. “If I can get away, sure. I think it’s going to be all hands. Full-scale, city wide hunt. We need Lillian Luthor back in custody. And Henshaw.”

“As soon as I’m done, I’m all yours.”

“Mon’El was asking for you.” Kara huffs and of course, Alex catches it. “Are we not happy about that?”

“I…”

“Kara? Are you okay?”

She slumps into her chair. “He kissed me. While he was all drugged up.”

“He did? Wait. You’re not sounding enthused. Want me to punch him? I think it’ll hurt my fist more than his face, but I’ll do it.”

Kara smiles. “No. Not necessary. I just—“

“Don’t feel it?”

Alex knows her so well.

“No.”

Not at all. Especially after the comparison of Lena, which still leaves adrenaline coursing through her body, Kara’s lips still tingling.

“I’ll let him down for you.”

Alex sounds far too excited at the idea. “No, Alex.” And Kara’s still smiling. “Just leave it. I’ll—I’ll do something about it, soon.”

“Like avoid it and hopes it never comes up?”

“Probably.”

They hang up and Kara turns to her keyboard and types, glad there’s no one around and she can bring out the super speed. She gets part way and realises she needs some quotes. Biting her lip, she stares at her phone. Her leg bounces. She needs them. She grabs her phone and types out a message.

 

_Hey Lena. I didn’t really manage to get any quotes from you about last night, or the situation with your mother._

 

Kara feels hideous just typing it out like that, as if the word mother isn’t some kind of emotional punch in Lena’s gut Kara can’t pretend to understand.

 

_I’m writing the article now. Anything you want to say?_

The three dots that show Lena’s typing appear quickly. Kara’s leg keeps bouncing. She fiddles with her glasses. Rereads the opening paragraph of the article. Finally, her phone vibrates.

 

_Here’s your quote: “I feel my actions last night should prove, once and for all, that L Corp is moving down a different path than the one set by my brother, Lex Luthor and now, apparently, my mother, Lillian Luthor, through her work within the abomination of an organisation, Cadmus. I want to repeat: I do not stand with their beliefs and while yes, I do believe there are some dangers that we all, together, need to be aware of while welcoming alien refugees to Earth, this should not stop the tolerance, acceptance and the generosity the human race has. I disagree with violence on either side, and hope that together, we can all, humans and aliens alike, make steps towards a better society. As for my mother’s escape, I of course played no role and hope she is caught soon and bought swiftly to justice.”_

And that is all it says. Kara blinks at it. Hopes to read between the lines. There’s nothing much more, there. Lena was raised with one of the most anti-alien families around and while she still may be working out of that—her alien detection tech, for example—she is clearly not the person her mother is.

Alex doesn’t see that though.

And there’s still that sliver of doubt in Kara’s mind, that leaves her feeling ashamed when she remembers the smiles that Lena always sends her way. The bite in her kiss. The grasp of her fingers.

Kara bites back a frustrated groan and goes back to her article. She sends Lena a ‘thanks’  and an approximation of when it will  be up. The message is ‘seen’ but no three dots appear and she tries to ignore the disappointment that swells.

The article is finished, sent to Snapper, sent back with edits so fast Kara’s head spins and she works in his edits and sends it back. He sends the all clear and then it’s live.

And Kara slips out of the building before she can be stopped again, flying to the DEO as quickly as she can. And stopping by her apartment for the fastest shower ever.

 

* * *

 

She arrives to mayhem.

Everyone is running around, the screens all pulled up with maps and GPS locations services and satellite images.

“Supergirl. Finally.” J’onn gives her a look and Kara just nods at him. “We need you.”

“What do we know?”

He turns to walk further in and Kara pauses next to Winn, who throws her a salute.

“Not much more than you, I’m afraid. There’s been no sightings of either of them.”

“Maybe I should sweep the building they had Mon’El and I in again?”

Alex walks up, her arms crossed. “No need. We went back, it’s still empty.”

“Have the police released a statement yet?” she asks.

“No.”

“An article just went up which means they’ll need to. It’s out. This means they can put out a call for civilians help in spotting them.” Kara crosses her arms and she and Alex stands side by side, staring up at the map in front of them all.

Winn pipes up. “I have facial recognition software running against all CCTV footage and any other footage available. It’ll alert us if they catch it.”

Kara sets her jaw. “That’s good. But I don´t think it’ll catch anything. They’ve gone underground.”

He shrugs. “That’s what we all think. But what about Lena? Her mom’s gotta be pissed. That was a real stab in the back.”

“One that saved every alien in this city.” The words cut out and she lowers a glare at Winn.

He wilts. “I know. And I for one am pretty glad about that, considering present company. I-I just meant, from her mother’s perspective. You know knife, back.” He mimes a stabbing motion.

“She’ll be looking to get one back at Lena, I’m sure.” Alex is scowling at the screen.

“Or, Lena has been a part of it from the beginning,” J’onn adds. Kara looks at him and he continues, “Last night could have all been part of keeping L Corp looking clean. We don’t know. “

“Lena wouldn’t do that.”

“Can we really be sure?”

And Kara wants to answer that. She does. But she isn’t sure how.

Her entire body is thrumming. She needs to do something. To fly. To keep her mind off that office and Lena and the way she’d shuddered around Kara’s hand. There’s a tight ball of tension low in Kara’s stomach and at the memory of Lena’s lips, so close to where she needed them, Kara swallowed and blinks.

“I need to do something.”

Alex turns to her. “Sweep the city. Sweep any warehouses, spaces. At least we can tick off places they definitely _aren’t_.”

Kara gives them a nod and she turns, her cap a whirl of red as she does so.

“And Supergirl?”

She looks over her shoulder, ready to take off.

“Be careful.”

Kara gives her a small smile and goes, the air a woosh around her ears.

 

* * *

 

She spends the entire afternoon in and out of old factories and warehouses , and even going through the sewers. There’s no sign of Lillian Luthor or Hank Henshaw, but she does uncover a ring of people smugglers accidentally, and drops them off kicking and screaming at the non-blown up precinct, and takes the victims to the hospital.

In one of the abandoned factories, she stumbles over a group of aliens she doesn’t recognise, holding a disturbing amount of scary looking weaponry and gets into a fight that leaves her blood rushing. Punching bad guys always gives her a thrill, and even when she ends up flying through three walls, she’s up with a bounce in her step, flying into them to pummel her fists into their flesh.

She wins.

 And doesn’t call Alex in over the coms until she’s completely incapacitated them herself.

She stands over them all, out cold, until Alex arrives and she and her fellow agents take in the sight of them, with the crumbling walls, with raised eyebrows.

Alex doesn’t comment. She knows Kara. She knows that sometimes, anger lurks in her fists. And Kara hates that she does feel a little better.

She’s barely thought of Lena once.

Really.

Despite all of the searches, there’s absolutely no sign of any of them.

Her article has kicked up a stir and the police have released a statement. Everyone in the city knows Lillian Luthor is out.

But what Kara hadn’t expected was the contention.

Comment sections explode.

There’re sides for Lillian Luthor and what she wants. Disgusting statements about otherness. There’s people slamming that side, calling for Lillian’s end and arguing that Cadmus is the biggest threat.

People sit in the middle, unsure of what to think.

Fear is running rampant.

There’s debate about Lena’s statements. Once a Luthor, always a Luthor is repeated again and again. People argue her innocence. Others point out her dubious past—rumours of tech to recognise aliens. Links to her mother’s works in the early day. Her sympathy for Lex.

It’s a mess and none of it helps the mess in Kara’s own head.

By midnight, she’s exhausted.

After a last stop by the DEO, she’s told to go home and get some rest. Everyone is waiting for some kind of statement from Lillian or at least from Cadmus, but so far it’s been quiet. Lena apparently allowed some operatives to be left around her apartment building and told them all she has her own security employed there, too.

Her phone’s been painfully silent and Kara doesn’t know what she expects.

Kara watches Alex leave to go to Maggie’s and gives her the best fake smile she can muster, then flies up to hover over the city for a while over the city.

If she drifts on her back, it’s as if she’s actually _in_ the stars.

She can zoom her vision in on things no one else can see. The tails of comets. Constellations many wouldn’t know. Solar flares and black holes. When she was younger, she tried to look for Krypton, her chest hollow because even _if_ she could see so far, there’d be nothing there, anyway.

It’s so silent this high. A relief, with her hearing, to be able to hear nothing for a little while. To watch the night spill like ink above her.

Lonely. It’s lonely there. Not the kind when she’s with people. The kind that reminds her her planet is gone. When that feeling crawls up her throat, she _wants_ to miss her parents. She really does.

But there’s anger burning in her throat, at their actions she really has no answers for. Frustrated, Kara dives away from the stars and back to Earth.

For reasons she will never know, she goes to Lena’s apartment. She’s seen the address on a letter in her office and maybe she shouldn’t be there. But Lena showed up at _her_ apartment once. So it’s only fair.

Kara watches from above as both the DEO operatives and Lena’s security patrol, eyeing each other with utter distrust. It’s so late, but there’s a light on and she chooses her moment carefully, flying down to hover in front of a window, looking into a living room. It’s open and she drifts in, calling out,

“Lena?”

Lena’s looking at her from her sofa, her eyes widening just a little. There’s another glass in her hand, brown liquid. Bourbon. Again.

The green of her eyes is a trap and Kara stands by the window, whishing she was in clothes, and not this outfit. She doesn’t want to be Supergirl, right then. She wants to be Kara, whoever that is, and to walk over to Lena and push her back against the sofa and kiss that press of her lips off of her. To slide her lips over the tightness near Lena’s eyes. To feel her relax under her fingers.

Or even to talk.

Without this emblem that represents too much to both of them blazing over her chest.

To ask her if she’s okay. If this morning was okay. If she knows what she’s doing any more than Kara does. If Lena carries the sins of her mother the way Kara does her parent’s.

She opens her mouth to speak and Lena’s jaw clenches. She shakes her head, barely visible, just once.

“Well.” And that voice pushes Kara’s shoulders back, her hands to her hips. She looks to the door and Lillian’s there, a glass in her hands that matches her daughter’s. “How convenient. Supergirl. Thank you, Lena.”

And Lena’s staring at her and Kara’s staring at the woman who made her bleed one of the very few times she has since she’s been on Earth.


	5. Naive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena is pale, her face washed out. Her knuckles are white where they grip her glass. Lillian is standing in the doorway as if this is any normal meeting, her face humourless. A mask.
> 
> It’s what Kara noticed most, trapped with Mon’El in that place. Lillian is a difficult person to get any kind of read on. In some ways, so is Lena. But she’s warm where her mother is not. Smiles softly, grins like seeing Kara is the highlight of her day. She throws expressions around with ease. Ones that make Kara’s heart speed up, make her want to bite her own lip in return. Or bite Lena’s for her.
> 
> But have they been real?
> 
> That’s an entirely different question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of your comments give me life. Please keep them up! Thank you so much for such great feedback.

Lena is pale, her face washed out. Her knuckles are white where they grip her glass. Lillian is standing in the doorway as if this is any normal meeting, her face humourless. A mask.

It’s what Kara noticed most, trapped with Mon’El in that place. Lillian is a difficult person to get any kind of read on. In some ways, so is Lena. But she’s warm where her mother is not. Smiles softly, grins like seeing Kara is the highlight of her day. She throws expressions around with ease.  Ones that make Kara’s heart speed up, make her want to bite her own lip in return. Or bite Lena’s for her.

But have they been real?

That’s an entirely different question.

They seemed real. Today had seemed real. Even as her mind whirled, unsure if she was doing what she should be, it had all been real. The gasps into her open mouth, the feeling of Lena on her hand on that desk. The breath that had washed over Kara’s thigh like a fan.

It had seemed real.

Maybe it was a mix of real and not-real.

Two sides of Lena Luthor.

There are certainly multiple sides to Kara Danvers.

Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised the person she’s pulled to the most she’s ever been is, in some ways, a mirror to herself. A mirror who’s staring straight at her, face inscrutable.

Kara’s hands are still on her hips, the pressure of her hands and the broadness of her chest always helps her sink more into Supergirl; to shed Kara Danvers and leave her behind for later.

So, Kara turns her gaze back on Lillian.

Kara hates her. Everything she is. Kara can almost feel how she’d backhanded Kara, splitting her lip so the taste of copper had spread over her tongue like a lie. The panic that had flooded her system at the taste. At the pain that had exploded.

She’d not used to physical pain anymore.

Her wrists tingle as if she’s tied down again. Restrained and helpless with a needle jabbing in her arm. That had been the worst—the be contained. Pressed down and unable to get away from it. Unable to get out. Watching clueless Mon’El bleeding out next to her and being utterly unable to do anything.

This woman is a hideous person. And she raised Lena. Two things Kara just can’t put together in her head.

Finally, Kara speaks, “Lena didn’t call me here.”

Lillian gives a ghost of a smile that’s anywhere from reassuring. It sends a thread of panic through Kara’s veins. “She knew you would come. The open window was an invitation. And she was right. Shocking, but sometimes it happens.”

From the corner of Kara’s eye, she can just see Lena flinch, barely, her face quickly falling back into neutral. Lena’s heart is beating rapidly, too fast. Lillian’s is calm, sure.

Lena betrayed her?

“You were wrong to come here.” Kara shifts her weight, attack mode sending her fists up. “I’m not powerless, this time. There’s nothing to stop me from taking you back into custody.”

Lillian tuts and steps into the room. Closer to Kara, the angry alien prepared to take her down. Which makes no sense. Neither does the actual smile on her lips.

“Oh, I don’t think you’ll be doing anything like that.”

Kara’s lip curls up. “Oh, yeah? And how do you plan to stop me.”

The hand not holding a tumbler glass so casually against her stomach comes out from behind her back. Something silver is grasped there; small, shaped like a cell phone. Blinking red.

“I think this may stop you.”

Lena’s hand trembles. But Kara keeps her gaze glued to the device. “What is that?”

“Good question, Supergirl. Sit.”

Kara’s stays standing, her hands still raised. “No.”

“Sit, for heaven’s sake. There’s no reason we can’t be civil.”

“Sit, Supergirl.” Lena takes a sip of her drink. That tremble is still there. Subtle enough Kara doesn’t think human eyes could see it.

“Why would I? I see no reason not to take you out, Lillian.” Kara’s voice is hard, the words vibrating through her vocal chords so harshly she can feel them.

She doesn’t like any of this. She wants to go back to today, in that office, the taste of Lena Luthor on her tongue and her thoughts quiet for the first time in too long. Or better yet, to the night before, to before Kara knew that Lena knew her identity, and they were kissing like escape was an option for either of them.

Reality sucks.

Lillian walks forward and sits on an armchair. She folds into it. It’s the same way the Lena moves. The confidence, the ownership of space Kara envies. But while Lena looks like royalty, Lillian looks like a plotter. The one who sits in the back and schemes. That one that sleeps with her brother on that stupid violent show Alex has made her watch a few times.

The blinking device is resting on Lillian’s knee in her hand.

Kara can’t keep her eyes from it.

“This is a detonation device, Supergirl. Or don’t they teach you anything useful in that little organisation that keeps you like a pet?”

Her blood turns cold. She lowers her arms slowly.

“A detonation device?”

“Yes. For a bomb.”

“I know what a detonation device is for.”

“Well, I couldn’t be sure.” She stares up at Kara, who somehow still has the feeling she’s being stared _down_ at. “Never know how well informed you are.”

Her fists curl at her sides. They stare at each other a moment, the clink of ice as Lena takes another sip the only sound. Finally, Kara sits at the opposite end of the sofa to Lena.

“There now.” Lillian nods. “Much better.”

“What do you plan to blow up?”

“Nothing, if you cooperate.”

“And if I don’t?”

“There are bombs planted at that disturbing little bar that welcomes aliens, one at a research institute dedicated to researching cures for alien diseases we yet can’t treat here on Earth—did you know they have shifts working twenty four hours a day? And one at the mayor’s office. Her sympathies align with the invaders. And she likes to work late.”

The room feels like it constricts, then. The air moving out of her lungs for a split second. All those people?

“I can get to you before you detonate.” Kara’s lips feel numb.

Lillian’s eyebrows rise. “You think I didn’t account for that? It’s armed, Supergirl. Hence why it’s blinking. If my hand moves off it, it detonates. Very easy to do, even with your super speed to catch me unawares. Just in case, my associate—Hank Henshaw? You know him I believe?—has orders to set it off if I don’t meet him at our arranged spot at our arranged time.”

Kara’s jaw clenches. Her teeth grind. She thinks fast, but comes up empty. Alex would know what to do. Or J’Onn. Anyone but Kara.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“Your blood.”

The same runs cold.

“You can’t use my blood again. Kalex will recognise an intruder in that manner now.”

“I don’t want to get back into that ice hole.”

“Then why?”

Lillian laughs. “You think I’m going to declare my major plan?”

“I could hope so.”

“No.” Lillian still looks utterly amused. “I want your blood. That is all.”

“And if I say no, you really expect me to believe you’ll take innocent lives?”

“You really think them innocent?”

“They are.” Kara wonders if she can talk until some kind of help arrives. But then won’t Lillian just set of the bombs? She could be bluffing. She has to be bluffing.

“They aren’t.” Lillian’s voice is rougher and she straightens in her chair, eyes lit. Kara wishes she couldn’t feel the heat radiating from Lena just feet away. “The time to choose sides has come, and they’ve chosen theirs. Alien sympathiser is as bad as alien.”

“So you’ll murder them?”

“If that’s the word you choose to use.”

“She means it, Supergirl.” Lena stares at her mother when Kara glances at her, swirling her drink against her leg. “I can promise you that.”

Her voice is monotone, ground out. The curve of her chin juts, and she doesn’t turn towards Kara once. Kara’s lips had been on that very jaw a mere twelve hours ago. She’d smelt like soap and expensive perfume; like promises Kara didn’t know how to make. And now she’s frost and snow, and Kara is doubting which side she’s on.

Kara looks back to Lillian. “My blood, and you deactivate the bombs?”

“You believe her and not me? The one willing to kill every alien in the city by way of chemical bomb? Interesting.” Lillian’s eyes are cold and flit from Lena and back to Kara. “And yes. That’s the deal.”

“How do I know you’ll deactivate them.”

Lillian grins, slowly. It holds nothing of the radiance of Lena’s. “You’ll just have to trust me.”

And, damn it, she’s right. Kara can think of no other way. “Can you show me proof, after, that bombs are out.”

“I can. I can have Henshaw video it. With time stamps.”

Kara presses her lips together. She looks to Lena, but she’s in the same position as before.

“Another condition.”

Lillian’s smile falls. “You have very little leverage, Supergirl.”

“You leave Lena out of this.”

And Lillian chuckles, again. “I think we can let Lena decide that. Lena? Are you with me? Or staying behind?”

Lena’s chin tilts up. Something ticks in her jaw. “I’m with you. Mom.”

She still doesn’t look at Kara. Kara, who feels like her air has left her body. She wants to implore her not to, but also doesn’t feel she should have to. Lena Luthor has been, apparently, a Luthor all along. Yet even the thought of that sounds wrong.

Kara turns back to Lillian. “Fine.”

“Good girl.” There is something so smug about her expression, Kara wants to put her fist in her face. “Lena. My girl.”

Kara watches Lena cross the room and pick up a bag. And that helmet is pulled out. It isn’t until then, that moment, that Kara realises what she’s agreed to.

Uselessness. No powers. To blow them out, again, in front of someone—two someones?—that she should never be so vulnerable in front of. A repeat of the last time: her powers for other’s lives. Multiple.

But there’s no question of whether or not to do it. Lena walks over, the helmet held in two hands, her eyes avoiding Kara’s.

“I do believe you know how this works.” Kara has never hated a voice as much as she hates Lillian Luthor’s in that moment. “Are you ready t—what was your charming phrase? Solar flare?”

Alex would kill Kara. But those bombs could kill hundreds.

She takes the helmet, her fingers brushing over Lena’s and sending a jolt down her arms. How is this the same woman as before? How has Kara been so stupid?

Standing, Kara pulls it on. It’s as hideously uncomfortable as the first time.

“Lena. Be a doll and pull the curtains. We don’t want flickering lights alerting your friends outside.”

Her teeth on her bottom lip, Lena turns and tugs curtains over windows, finishing and standing in the middle of the room, her arms crossed. She’s changed her clothes since their moment on the desk. She’s in jeans, dark, that cling to her legs and a soft, expensive dark red blouse. The most dressed down Kara has ever seen her. Her stomach warms and Kara hates that even now, she thinks Lena is beautiful. There’s something tragic about her expression and Kara's head hurts, trying to follow her own thoughts--has Lena really gone back to her mother? Did she really ever leave? Or is there something far more sinister going on, and Lena isn't acting of her own free will?

Lena still won’t look at her.

“We don’t have all night, Supergirl.”

Kara gives Lillian her best Supergirl glare and takes a steadying breath. Then squints her eyes and starts.

It takes an age. Kara gathers her anger, her teeth gritting as she puts as much force behind it as she can. Her vision is blue, all blue. She hears a light shatter, her voice in her ear as she shouts out and then it’s gone.

The feeling is always like something slithering out of her. A slipping feeling, like her cells are trying to grasp it back but it’s falling away anyway. A heaviness in her bones, and then an overwhelming lightness. With one hand, she pushes the helmet off. It’s heavy. Heavier than it should be. It thuds on the carpet, the sound smothered. Not sharp. Not loud.

There’s a loss and an aching remembrance. A feeling of returning to normalcy that no longer feels normal. It’s bitter sweet on her tongue, to feel like this.

And Lena, in front of her, blurry as the world spins, her face so white she almost glows.

“Excellent,” Lillian says, as Kara feels her knees tremble.

She wants to stay standing. But everything is moving and her body’s just so heavy. The carpet rushes up at her. It burns the heel of her hands, her knees. What was the word Alex told her once? Carpet burn.

The sensation is strange. A flash of the feeling, from Krypton. The carpet-like material on the floor of her Aunt’s house. Astra’s voice, mingling with Kara’s mother’s. Laughter from another room. She’s small, her hands splayed out and she’s on her hands and knees, and tugs her toy along the floor.

Her knees stung like this, then.

Nostalgia burns her throat and she pushes it down and raises her head, her hair around her face. “Hurry up and do it.”

Lillian looks so happy Kara wishes she’d just punched her. But that red is still blinking on her knee. Then hands are tugging at her arms and Kara wants to shrug them away but there’s no way she could stand alone. The gentle touch of them makes Kara’s stomach ache. A feeling she wants to reject.

Lena’s hair falls over Kara’s face, the smell so sweet. Pure. So much more dulled than when it was pressed into her face earlier.

Kara wants her powers back.

Lena pushes up Kara’s sleeve and ties a tourniquet around her arm. Kara wants to say ‘ow’, but is painfully aware of Lillian’s eyes on her, so grits her teeth and says nothing.

She turns her eyes to Lena, her hair still falling around her face as she easily snaps on gloves, swabs Kara’s arm with alcohol that feels so cool it almost hurts. She pulls out a needle and syringe and finally, she speaks, her fingers gentle on Kara’s bicep.

“Ready?”

“Yes.” It’s fascinating and horrible to watch it slide into her arm. The tug of her blood into the vacuum is strange and Kara wants it all back in her body. She isn’t made to bleed. “How do you know how to do this?”

Kara can just make out Lena’s lips, which curve upwards just slightly. “I may be a CEO now, but I started low. I hold a double degree in science and business. My final research project involved a lot of taking blood.”

Kara wants to learn this over dinner. To watch red bloom over Lena’s cheeks as she drinks wine and sends her a smile over pasta and bread. Or if that’s not what either of them want, to feel murmurs in her ear as sweat cools over their skin, sheets kicked to the floor. Sprawled on the sofa in Lena’s office, limbs askew.

Not like this.

Kara doesn’t speak again.

It’s over in minutes.

“Excellent. Well.” Lillian stands and Kara stays on the sofa, too weak to push herself up and meet her with a glare. So she narrows her eyes from where she is. “We should be going, Lena.”

“You won’t get past the guards.” Kara is shooting in the dark, she knows. Lillian got _in_ here, after all.

“Lena has alternative entrances sorted out. Underground. If anyone so much us makes a sound following us in the tunnel, this—“ Lillian holds out the remote “—will be let go.”

Kara does stand then, shaky and sick feeling. She puts her hands on her hips and imagines it looks pathetic. She can feel the sweat cooling on her brow, her palms clammy. “You said you’d show me proof they were deactivated.”

“I did. Just not when. I’ll send it through a nice Cadmus video tomorrow.”

“You lied.”

“I omitted. Stop being so naïve.”

Kara sits abruptly on the sofa, whatever strength she’d found gone. Lillian starts to walk out the room and with her back turned, Lena finally looks at Kara. Her eyes are wells of something and Kara has no idea what. Her lips part a second, then press tight and she turns to follow her mother out.

“Lena.” Kara hates how raw her voice is. How much she wants her to turn and come back.

And they both pause in the doorway and turn back as one. Lena hesitates, Kara can see it.

But so can Lillian.

Her eyes go from Kara to Lena and whatever she sees, Lena tries to cover but Kara is too exhausted to realise she needs to. Lillian’s lip curls up, and then both do as she grins, delighted. Lena swallows and closes her eyes, Lillian’s hand against her shoulder, pushing her back against the door frame so they’re facing each other, side on to Kara.

Profiles of two women, one delighted and one who looks ready to fall apart.

“What is this?” Lillian asks. She looks to Kara, who suddenly feels dirty. Lillian’s eyes go back to Lena, who opens her own. Angry blotches have spread over Lena’s cheeks, and the tendons in her neck bounce as she clenches her jaw. “You? And Supergirl?”

Lena just stares at her, her chest rising and falling.

Lillian ‘tsks’  three times. “Well. That’s interesting.”

Her hand falls from her shoulder and Lillian doesn’t even look back at Kara.

“Come on, Lena.”

Lillian doesn’t even check she follows, but just walks away.

And Lena drops her head back against the doorframe, her eyes staring up at the ceiling. There’s something rigid, in her posture. She takes in a breath and looks Kara straight in the eye. There is a flash of something, pure fury, mixed with something violated. Raw.

Something not for Kara, but is just brimming in Lena's eye; uncontained until she blinks, once, slowly, and it's gone. For a second, Lena wavers.

Then she straightens her shoulders, and follows her mother out.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ahem* sorry. Thoughts?


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're all freaking awesome. Did you know that? I don't think I've ever had so much fun writing a fanfic and reading the comments. I tumble under the same name if you want to come squee with me about stuff.

 

 

“Why didn’t you just use your super speed?”

Kara can’t remember feeling this tired. It’s in her bones. Deep in her marrow. Exhaustion filtering through the very fibre of her. Her hands tremble in her lap and she bunches them together. People are buzzing around the room, operatives in dark outfits, waving gadgets and things that beep or emit white noise. There’s the low murmuring of their voices as they speak to each other, picking apart Lena’s apartment like a puzzle that’s theirs to put together.

It’s not their puzzle

It’s Kara’s.

But she can’t feel like that. Like she has some ownership on Lena Luthor and everything that’s resulted from the last few hours.

Except she does.

Because she can still feel that bite on her shoulder and the sounds Lena made as she urged Kara on for more. But mostly, she’s haunted by that look in Lena’s eye before it shuttered away and she turned to follow her mother. Broken. Exposed. Angry.

And, Kara is starting to think, scared.

But maybe it’s what she _wants_ to see.

Kara is so confused.

Alex’s hand is on her shoulder, her fingers gripping tight. Tight enough to leave a bruise, considering Kara is no more than human right then. But the slight ache of it is anchoring, a tether. Her side presses along Kara as she stands next to her, close even as she looks own to ask that question. Kara just wants to sink her head into her waist and close her eyes and sleep.

Winn blinks at her, standing in front of her holding a tablet, smudges under his eyes. Being pulled from bed in the early hours will do that to him. J’Onn stares at her steadily, his arms crossed. The room is bright and Kara blinks.

“My super speed?”

“Yeah?” Alex’s voice is soft, imploring. But Kara knows her: she won’t stop until she gets her answers. “Why not just snatch it from her hand?”

“She said it was armed, and that letting it go would set them all off at once.”

“Couldn’t you just hold your hand over hers with the thing in it, and not let it go?”

Kara wants to fall back into the sofa and put her hands over her eyes and just block this all out. “I’m fast. Faster than the eye can follow. But the eye still registers I’ve moved. Reflexes are faster than thought and I see it all the time: people get a shot off the second I move, their pupils dilate, their hearts speeds up, their hand flinches: what if that happened and this thing was so sensitive it registered her hand moving off it?” Kara’s pitch is rising, her voice a little strangled. “What if it went off and killed hundreds?”

“But if you’d subdued her, we could have found the bombs.”

“She said Hank was standing by—how long was their wait time? What were his orders? Lillian was never going to give us that information. And I didn’t know.”

Alex’s thumb brushes Kara’s shoulder and Kara draws in a shuddering breath. She’d panicked. There’d been too many ifs to put innocents at risks.

J’Onn shifts his weight to his other foot. “If you’d taken the device we could have moved into the locations they we knew the bombs were and disarmed them. Or you could have with super speed.”

“And if I didn’t make it before Hank set them off?”

His lips are a thin line. “There was a risk.”

“Too much of one.” Kara stands, her legs less shaky, but feeling weak and trying to cover it. The suit feels like a fake with the lack of strength thrumming through her blood. It’s too tight, suddenly. Suffocating her. She wants it off. She wants a shower. She wants to sleep. She wants to find Lillian, and is utterly useless to help. “And again: what if the thing set it off? It didn’t even have a button. I had no idea how sensitive it is.”

It feels better to be standing. Eye level. She feels less like she’s being interrogated now. Even as her hand falls away from Kara’s shoulder, Alex shifts slightly closer, as if making sure Kara is okay. As if needing to be close. Alex is always extra protective when Kara’s powers blow out.

“But—“

J’Onn is interrupted by Winn. “What did it look like? The—“ he waves his hand around as if holding a remote control, thumb moving in the air “—the detonator.”

“Shiny.” Kara licks her lip. “Shaped kind of like an iPhone. It was blinking red. I didn’t see any buttons.”

He taps at his screen and they all watch him, eyebrows raised. “Did it look like—“ he spins the screen around in his hands to face them, making his own ‘woosh’ sounds effect “—this?”

On the screen is exactly what she’d seen, just as she described it.

“Yes.” She nods, her jaw tight. “That’s it.”

He gives a low whistle, looking between them all like they’re all in on some information they’re actually clueless about. “Well, sure glad you didn’t move her hand at all then.”

Alex cocks her head. “And why is that?”

“This—“ he taps a finger on the screen and it zooms in on the symbol etched into it “—is Luthor Corp tech.”

“L Corp?” Alex asks.

“No. _Luthor_ Corp. Pre Lena Luthor the betrayer.” Kara twitches at that, just her hand, but Alex catches it and throws her a look. “It’s about three years old. They designed them to be completely touch sensitive. No buttons. Armed once a person wraps their hand around it, detonated just by opening their hand anything more than fifty percent of what was touching the surface previously. That can just mean their fingers can release and palm still be in contact, as the entire device is sensitive, not just one side.”

They all blink at him.

“To be fair,” he says, “even the older style with the button could have detonated just at the slightest shift.” He smiles at her and Kara smiles weakly back. “So good call.”

“I understand your hesitancy, Kara. I just—“ J’Onn is relentless and Kara is tired.

“We just lost Lillian Luthor, potentially were betrayed be Lena Luthor, and I’ve blown out my powers and given them my blood, again, for reasons we don’t understand.”

“Well,” he shrugs, “yes.”

She sighs. “Are we done?” She turns to Alex, who’s looking at her, concerned. “Can I go home?”

Alex looks to J’Onn. Not for permission, but with narrowed eyes that clearly say ‘say yes’.

He nods. “Go home, Supergirl. Alex, you accompany her.”

“Can you get to the bombs?” Kara asks. “I don’t trust her to disarm them.”

“I’ve dispatched teams to the mayor’s office, the bar and three research labs that are known to be researching cures for alien diseases.”

Kara nods. “Thank you. Where were you all when I called? I heard sirens.”

“There was an explosion at a hospital known to be accepting aliens.”

Kara narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“We believe it was unrelated, but there was a bomb in a lab there.”

“How many casualties?”

J’Onn looked to Alex then back to Kara. “Ten. More injured. Mostly patients, at this time. The labs were empty.”

“And you’re sure it was unrelated?”

Alex sighs. “We can’t be, but she didn’t mention this bomb to you and, well, the city’s up in arms.”

Kara hunches her shoulders. The comment section on her article was enough to tell her that. The city was a broiling pit of aliens and alien sympathisers versus those whose ideas aligned more with those of Cadmus.

“There are already protests outside the hospital. They had to set up a police line to keep the two sides separate—those who are celebrating the attack and those protesting it.”

“What?” Kara swallows. “People are celebrating a bomb in a hospital? I have to get there—“

Alex’s fingers curl around her bicep and stop her moving forward. “It’s not safe for you to be out there right now.”

And Kara wants to argue. She wants to tell her she’s wrong. That this is the exact kind of thing Supergirl _needs_ to be at.

But damn it, she’s right.

 

* * *

 

Kara’s full of potstickers. And ice-cream. She has no idea how Alex found somewhere that delivers at three am but she’s beyond happy she has. Still exhausted, but there isn’t much that can make her move right then.

Under a blanket on her sofa, Alexa’s legs and feet pressing into her own, she can almost pretend it’s any other day. The TV is flickering and the sound is low. They’re both blinking heavily.

But there’s a distinct feeling of _lacking_ in Kara’s body and Lillian is on the run with a tube of Kara’s blood, and all Kara can see is the haunting green of Lena’s eyes when she turned away and followed her mother.

“Why do you think she left you alive?”

Alex’s voice is low and Kara leans more heavily into Alex’s shoulder. “I don’t know.”

“You were there and vulnerable—twice now, she didn’t kill you when she could have. Not that I’m complaining.”

The screen is filled with people and soft canned laughter. Kara can barely make out what they’re saying, when usually she’d have to tune it out to be able to pay attention to Alex. It’s weird and normal all at the same time. “The first time, I think it was in case she needed more blood.”

“Maybe. Maybe that’s why this time.”

“Why not kidnap me then? And why does she need my blood?” Kara turns her head to stare her sister straight in the eye as she asks, “What could she possible need it for?”

Alex presses her lips together and shakes her head. “Maybe she didn’t kidnap you because containing you for so long holds a risk? But I really don’t know. And I keep thinking, over and over. Why your blood this time? I’ve got nothing though—whatever it is, it won’t be good.”

Kara gives her a half smile. “Luckily, I have you.”

“Always.” Alex’s lips curve up. And then the smile fades. “You want to talk about Lena?”

No. That’s the last thing at all Kara wants to do. She swallows and turns back to the TV and shakes her head.

“Are you surprised?” Alex asks. “That she betrayed us?”

How does Kara explain that she really isn’t sure she believes that Lena did. Or if she did, she was at least conflicted about it.

The facts pile up against her: the window as an invitation, the fact that Lillian knew she’d come to it, meaning Lena shared _something_ , the way she’d said she was with her mother, her chin in the air and jaw set so tight Kara had wanted to flinch from it. The fact that she’d followed her mother. The way she’d told Kara to do what her mother had said. The fact that Lena had taken her blood without a single protest.

But then there was that trembles in her fingers, the way she’d all but cringed when her mother had seen _something_ between Supergirl and Lena, the avoidance of Kara’s eyes.

The curve of her lips, as she shared a part of her history with Kara, the needle in her arm sucking up blood.

“Yes. No. I don’t know Alex.”

“What makes you think she didn’t when all the facts point to the fact that she did?”

Kara doesn’t look away from the screen, not taking in a thing. “She couldn’t look me in the eye. There wasn’t a single thing about her that said she felt like she’d succeeded at something. No gloating.”

“She could have been acting. Wanting you to feel that doubt.”

“So why foil her mother’s plan then go back to her?”

Alex sucks in a breath. “Good question. With several possible answers. Her plan all along. A trick. She changed her mind. To get to Supergirl and the DEO. Or maybe the same reason she acted like she did in the apartment while her mother was there. To make you unsure.”

That could be it. But Kara’s gut screams it isn’t so. Or is that part of her that sends a swoop in her stomach at the sight of Lena’s smile, the part that speeds her heart up when Lena steps too close? The part that went to her apartment that night for no reason except to see Lena?

“Maybe.”

Alex doesn’t comment on the fact that her tone is not at all convincing. “ Kara…what were you doing there?”

She isn’t sure how to explain she’d just wanted to see Lena. To comfort her, to make that look in her eye go away that had been there since she’d given her mother up, and then heard her mother had escaped. That Kara had been craving Lena’s skin, to fall into something that she keeps wanting to pretend was an accident but had been on her way to admitting really wasn’t. To get lost in Lena’s lips and smell and warmth, to map the expanse of her back with her tongue and trail her fingers after it. To learn what made Lena crumble. To find relief for the ache that had settled between her own legs, and throbbed every time Kara remembers the breath and tongue against her underwear.

And Kara lies to her sister.

“I wanted to ask her about the other night. To check in. Your concerns were in my head. When I was patrolling, I saw her window was open.”

“Okay.”

And Kara doesn’t look at her, because she can hear Alex doesn’t entirely believe her, and she knows all it’ll take is one look in Kara’s eyes and she’ll know. Alex always knows.

“So. How’s Maggie?” And Kara smiles as she asks, and does turn then, in time to watch red creep along her sister’s neck.

“She’s fine.”

“Yeah? All okay after the explosion?”

Alex nodded. “She is. They released her pretty quickly. She’s at home.”

Alone. And injured.

“Hey.” Kara nudges her. “I’m fine. You can go there, if you want.”

“As if I’m leaving after this.” Alex sounds completely exasperated and Kara wants to hug her. “You have no powers. Plus, you’re all emo.” Kara gives her a dirty look and Alex grins with zero remorse. “I was with her for a few hours and she’s so hopped up on pain meds she barely knew I left. I’ll check in come the morning.”

Kara’s chest swells, just then, the emotion pushing into her throat. She loves her sister. More than she can ever put into words. She grins. “So no…you know?”

“What?”

“Well, she’s been injured the….what? Forty eight hours you’ve been together?”

“Yeah?”

“So….” Kara wiggles her eyebrows and feels ridiculous.

“Kara! No. No, none of…no.”

Kara laughs. “That’s a strong no.”

They’ve always been awkward talking about sex, but always talked about it anyway, in fits and bursts of rushes of words. They used to talk about differences on their planets as giggly teenagers, but that morphed into talking about who had done what with whom and trying to make each other go the reddest.

Currently, Kara is winning, which is not how this game usually goes.

“I just…the first night was new, and…wow.” Alex lets out a long breathy noise and Kara’s smile turns soft. Seeing her sister like this is so new, and so fragile, she wants to pull her close and make sure she gets to stay that way forever. “But I wasn’t…I wasn’t ready, for that? You know?”

Kara used to know. Sex has never been the easiest, for her. It made her nervous and on Krypton, everyone was more pious. But she left at a brittle age to feel that—young enough the ideas hadn´t completely taken root, old enough they were there, floating in the depths of her. She likes sex. A lot. It’s the emotions and the when and the start that’s always been lost to her. Feeling guilty that it’s not with someone she wants forever, because on Krypton, that’s how it works. She ends up with a mish mash of feelings she’s always had problems picking apart.

Apparently that isn’t how it goes, with Lena. Lena just happens. Happened? Whichever. It’s like a mistake she just keeps making, her brain unable to unlearn it.

There’s a hollow feeling, in her gut, that maybe that is all in the past, now.

“I know.” Kara does.

“And now she’s injured.” Alex shrugs.

Kara brushes Alex’s hair off her face and smiles. “You’re utterly smitten.”

“I really am. I don’t—I don’t know what to do with this feeling.”

_That_ Kara really does understand. “You’ll figure it out.”

“I’ve never—you know, slept with a girl. What if…”

“What if what?”

“What if I’m terrible? Or, or I don’t actually like it? Or I don’t know what to do?”

She’s adorably flustered and Kara chuckles and Alex gives her a glare that fails miserably in her fluffy hoody and still dreamy face. “You’ll be fine. Just… don’t overthink it?”

“Have you…slept with a girl?”

Kara feels red crawl into her cheeks. “Yes. If you wondered that, why were you so scared to tell me you’re a lesbian?”

Alex shrugs. “I don’t know. I wasn’t sure and wondered if maybe you hadn’t said anything  because you thought it was wrong.”

“No! No. Alex, no. I just…never really thought about it. On Krypton it wasn’t an issue who your mate was, gender wise, and it never came up here."

“Then why did it feel like you freaked out?”

“You goon. I wasn’t freaked out. I was freaked out at how freaked out you were, and didn’t want to make you freak out more.”

Alex snorts. “We’re a mess.”

“We really are.”

“So you’ve slept with a girl?”

Not even a day ago, really. One of the most complicated girls Kara has ever met. On her desk. But Kara is sure those aren’t the details her sister wants. “Yes?”

“How’s it different?”

Kara laughs. “Do it and find out for yourself.”

The pillow hits her out of nowhere, square in her face, and she pulls it off, laughing. “Hey! I have no powers. That hurt.”

Alex is smirking. “Good. We finally have an even playing field.”

And Kara narrows her eyes, swinging the pillow as hard as she can, not holding back for once in her life on Earth. It hits Alex with a satisfying thump and Kara’s chest feels lighter than it has in days and days when Alex laughs, indignant and joyous all at once.

 

* * *

 

It takes days to get her powers back. She wonders if it’s because she only blew them out not long ago, and Winn seems to think she could be right. Alex takes a blood test while they have the opportunity and Kara tries not to think about the fingers that had been so gentle on her bicep the day before as Lena had drawn her blood in her own living room.

The vigilante picks up the slack in Supergirl’s absence and the city continues to boil, ready to explode. Think pieces are all over the internet, and there’s as much discussion about Lillian Luthor's escape as there is debate over Lena: turned bad, always bad, or victim? Her face is everywhere and Kara can’t bear to look. The second in command has taken temporary control of L Corp and the DEO posts operatives everywhere to keep an eye on it.

Protests turn violent. There’s a rash of disappearances, and most are from the anti-alien side, and that side screams accusations at the other.

It’s a mess, and one that can’t go on like this for much longer. Kara works, and since she can’t be at protests as Supergirl, she covers them as Kara Danvers and tries to calm the tide. Snapper throws so many articles back at her for bias her head spins and starts to learn to be more balanced. She stays low and gets updates from Alex about any leads.

Of which they are none.

Cadmus is completely off the radar.

Except for a video.

It switches on with its weird head at CatCo, and she shares a look with James as everyone in the room freezes to watch the screen. The bombs aren’t mentioned, since the DEO managed to find them over a course of an hour and disarm them. But they glorify the success of having two Luthors working together for Cadmus, it pushes for the escalation of protests, and blames the alien sympathisers for the disappearance of known alien-haters.

Kara watches a muscle tick in James’ cheek and her hand curls into a fist at her side.

Her nails bite into her palm and draws blood.

It hurts, and the sight of the red against her flesh shocks her as it always does. That bittersweet feeling swells in her throat and Kara wishes she knew what her normal was, now, because she certainly doesn’t feel normal like this.

She’s spent twenty four hours wondering if she should tell Alex Lena knows her identity.

But as more time ticks on and no one shows up at CatCo, as no one targets Kara Danvers, she holds the knowledge close as her private bit of proof: maybe Lena isn't on Cadmus' side.

Or at least completely.

Or maybe Lena’s holding it as her own card to play.

It’s in the evening of the forth day she can feel it, the expulsion through her cells. It’s like a switch, and that energy is in her muscles, her hands almost tingling with the relief of it. The scabs on her palms are gone before she can even blink and the bruise she got when she stumbled into her coffee table fades so fast even she can’t catch it. Alex had watched her stumble sleepily over it head first and just snorted and made a comment that if Kara didn’t have her powers, she wouldn’t be able to hide the fact that she’s an absolute klutz.

She’s out of her window like a shot, the sky overhead blood red, tinged orange in places: it’s on fire and Kara flies as high as she can before bursting in amongst pink clouds overhead, spinning, before she dives down and up, a laugh tearing from her throat at the weightless feeling, the way she feels like she’s _her_ again.

People cheer when she sweeps over streets and she hears conversation, can zoom in on crimes and break them up.

She throws herself into being present at the protests, walks into bars known for fights between the angry sides, and glowers at everyone in the room, her hands on her hips and her shoulders back.

She works nonstop, and does anything and everything to try and forget Lena Luthor, and the fact that they haven’t heard a single thing. Not from Cadmus, nor Lillian, nor Lena.

And Kara feels like she’s betraying the DEO, her sister—everything, for the fact that it’s worry twisting in her gut. Not about what they’re plotting, but _for_ Lena.

She lies in bed at night and watches shadows playing on the ceiling. Restlessly, she kicks at her sheets and ends up tangled in them. She flips from convinced Lena has been playing her to sure Lena’s being played herself.

A pawn in her mother’s life.

And it’s back and forth until Kara gets up to fly laps over the city, begging for something to sink her fist into.

Seven days after Lillian’s escape—or Lena’s disappearance, as Kara prefers to think of it—her coms crackle in her ear as she ducks a swing from an alien with a robotic arm, grinning as she swings back to punch him through a wall. Her cape whirls and dusts floats down and he groans, but doesn’t get up.

Her shoulders slump, disappointed. “Oh, come on. You’re twice my size. Surely you have more fight in you than that?”

He groans again and doesn’t move and Kara huffs, blowing her hair out of her eye.

_“Supergirl?”_

“Yeah I’m here.”

_“We have a situation.”_

More punching? She walks over and nudges the guys foot with her own, none too gently. He doesn’t move.

“So do I. I have an alien to pick up in the old jeans factory near the stadium.”

_“Supergirl, we need you in the air.”_

Alex’s voice is tight and Kara finally pays attention. “What’s up?”

_“There are Kryptonians in the air. At least four, flying laps around the city.”_

She freezes. “What?”

How? Some of Astra and Non’s accomplices not accounted for? Prisoners they didn’t know of?

Refugees Kara had no idea are here?

_“Kara?”_

“I’m on my way.”

_“They don’t look friendly.”_

She takes off without looking back at the alien out cold on the floor.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was slower than the last ones! Holiday season is always a bit crazy. Thanks again for all the comments and kudos.
> 
> Who missed Lena last chapter? Me. I missed her.

Kara hovers above the city, silent, arms crossed. Far below, four people are flying, circling.

Something in her throat is aching. Are they Kryptonians? Is this real?

One has long, flowing black hair and Kara could swear her heart stills in her chest. Astra?

But no. She’s too tall, her hair not quite the right shade.

Alex comes in low in her ear.

_“Do you have eyes on them Supergirl?”_

One way to test if they’re Kryptonian: how is there super hearing? Kara keeps her voice low, a murmur, “I do.” No reaction. They just continue to circle. “I’m hovering maybe a mile above them. They don’t seem to be able to hear this. Though if they’re not listening for it, they could easily miss it.”

_“Do you recognise any of them?”_

“I can’t see any of their faces. They’re watching the ground as they circle.”

_“They’re just circling like sharks. We’ve managed to get images of their faces and are running it through the computer. Winn hasn’t come up with any match on our Alien database yet.”_

Kara keeps her eyes on them. Going around and around. There’s something about their movements. Something just a little jolty. Like the first few days Kara had tried flying, years and years ago. Something uncomfortable runs up her spine.

“Run it against missing persons.”

Alex passes on the message.

_“Supergirl, don’t engage until we know more.”_

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

She can’t shake this feeling of dread. It’s settled over her and there, with the wind playing in her hair, Kara wonders if what she thinks could even be possible. But what isn’t possible, these days? Here she is, flying above a city. J’Onn is the last survivor of an entire planet. Kal-El, her own cousin, is more human than Kryptonian, yet his alien traits are worn like a badge. They have technology that can alter beings, can blow up buildings, could end the world.

Anything is possible.

_“Supergirl…we have a match for each of them. They’re four of the six people reported missing over the last week from the anti-alien side.”_

Her blood runs cold. Impossible for her, but the sensation is there nonetheless. “Alex…”

_“Your blood.”_

“Is that even possible?”

_“I…I don´t know.”_

“Maybe that’s not what this is.”

Kara knows it’s a lie, a grasp at something that isn’t this. Anything but this. That makes her blood a weapon. Within in her gut, something twists: she feels violated.

_“I’m standing here with J’onn and Winn and we aren’t coming up with any other options.”_

Her hands curl into fists as she watches the four of them circle. Two men, two women. Around and around the city. Diving occasionally but then swooping back up. With Kara’s _blood_ pumping through their veins?

“But _how_ , Alex?”

_“We have no idea, Supergirl.”_

Her fists shake, just slightly. There’s no cutting into her palms this time. No red smeared over her skin. She’s steel, once more. She is impenetrable. She is Supergirl, and right now there are four people below her unworthy of these gifts.

“I want to engage.”

_“No! Supergirl, we have no idea what they want.”_

The answer comes easily. “They want me.”

 _“Maybe.”_ The idea has clearly occurred to Alex. _“Maybe not. Maybe they’re not here to fight.”_

It’s always about a fight. Even for Kara: she will try to deescalate. Especially when something shouldn’t be a threat. When there’s innocence layered in amongst the mayhem. It’s rare. But it happens. But even then, it comes down to punching, to fists, to the smack of violence. Something she once turned from.

Her planet had not been outwardly aggressive. They argued with words, with twists of phrases. With facts and figures.

But Kara learned it, here on Earth. And it’s become a part of her. She enjoys it. The outlet. To sink her fist into something and watch it fly backwards. Even the return hits get her adrenaline pumping, get that flashing before her eyes.

“Well, let’s find out.”

And she drops down, switching of her coms as she does, fast as a bullet, pulling up in the centre of the circle. There’s something bubbling within her, some anger from deep down. Something hot tearing through her veins.

She turns slowly, spinning like a top. All four turn their gaze onto her. One narrows their eyes. Another doesn’t make any kind of expression. Two smile. It’s anything but friendly.

They all move in closer, circling her, as she turns in the centre, an axis, a balance.

The draw even closer, though still far enough away she always has two in her sights as they rotate around each other.

 “You four are supposed to be missing,” she says.

One of the smiling ones, a woman with red hair, shrugs as she flies. “We all had a higher calling.”

“Cadmus is a terrorist group. Not a higher calling.”

“Cadmus is here to wipe out a plague.” One of the men passing says it, his lip curling up. “One that you’re a part of.”

“And you’re all not, now?” Kara asks. Her hands are in fists again. She floats as if she’s standing, feet pointed towards the Earth. The city is much closer now. They’re not so high. They all clearly want to put on a show.

“We just needed to level the playing field a little.” It’s one of the women again. The one with narrowed eyes. “But we’re still human.”

Were they?

“How did this happen?” Kara asks.

The other man grins. “Magic.”

“My blood isn’t magic.” Kara keeps her eyes on him.

“No. But it worked magic.”

“What do you want?”

They aren’t going to give her any answers. Not today. They’ve clearly been instructed not to. If Kara lets herself, she can hear the murmuring below. A crowd’s gathered, staring upwards at the five flying beings above them.

They all stop moving, floating in place, and it’s just Kara spinning, ever so slowly in place.

“You.” The smiling woman said.

And as one, they all fly straight at her.

They’re fast.

As fast as Kara. Almost.

And it´s that thought that sends adrenaline through her, not four speeding humans coming straight for her. She drops, and they all avoid colliding with each other, two going up and two coming straight down after her. They had a split second head start on her and the a man and a woman collide with her, Kara’s breath flying out of her at the impact. Their arms are around her middle, their force pushing her down hard. She pushes back, trying to fly up, but her strength can’t match the two of theirs combined and she feels panic creep into her mind.

They’re as strong as her.

Almost. She can feel it. The combination of their strength isn’t quite double her own. But it’s not far off.

Their speed is phenomenal and the two above are diving after them, their pace leisurely, their eyes glued on Kara’s. One of them is grinning, now. The other still so impassive.

They slam into the ground, grass and sand and dirt flying up around them, cool earth surrounding them. Their momentum carries them metres under. So far the sun doesn’t reach them, everything cool and dark. Presumably, they weren’t prepared for it as their grip loosens, just a second, and Kara shoots up, using their surprise against them. She bursts out of the hole their combined weight created.

The city park.

Not the best place to be.

Kids are standing staring at her as she hovers just above the ground. One lets go of a balloon, another stares at her, mouth open as his ice-cream drips down his hand.

Families are everywhere.

They can’t do this here.

But before she can move the two from above hit her, sending her flying and Kara sees red.

She flies straight at one, her fist swinging into his jaw and he slams into a water fountain, a stream of water spurting upwards. The other grits her teeth—no longer happy—and they fly at each other, colliding in the centre with a clap of sound—two immoveable objects strike. Only, one is slightly more immovable than the other. Again, Kara can feel it. The slight give, the truth that’s there: this person with stolen strength from Kara’s body lacks just a little of what Kara has. It’s not as potent, whatever it is.

They still need to move this away from the park. So many innocents. Fragile people.

A fist hits her face and Kara catches it when it’s on its way towards her again, cocking her head at the woman, whose eyes widen, just a little, before Kara is slamming her own into the woman’s stomach, hooking it so she flies upwards, away from the people. As Kara goes to fly after her, another body hits her from behind, wet from the fountain, and they slide over the grass, people screaming to move out of the way.

“Everyone back off! Get to safety.” She shouts it as she stands, kicking at the man who couldn’t get up as quickly as she did. He slides into a hot dog stand, the seller already running. The authority she can always lace into her voice is there: Supergirl stands with her hands on her hips, her eyes on the man slowly standing from the wreckage of the cart, mustard smeared over his face. The people she can notice from her peripheries scatter. Parents yank children back and all Kara can hope is that everyone is listening to her.

Where are the other two? The two that pulled her down so hard they tunnelled into the Earth?

The man sneers, the effect lessened by the ketchup leaking down his pants. “Pretending to be a helpful citizen while bringing invaders onto our planet. You act so moral, Supergirl. But you’re the worst of them.”

She opens her mouth but someone smashes into her and her knees go out from under her. The woman she sent flying into the sky. They roll over the ground, and Kara digs her hands into the woman’s chest, fingers gripping her shirt, dragging her up. Kara’s knee drives into her stomach. Her elbow into her head. The woman fights back. It’s punch for punch, until the other man hits her, the smell of hot dog strong on his clothes.

With the two combined, Kara starts to worry.

If the other two reappear, she can’t hold them back.

“We’re stronger than you.” The woman hisses it into Kara’s ear and drives her fist into Kara’s face.

Kara’s feet are sinking into the ground, the two of them pushing down on her. She kneels. Grass digs into Kara’s palms. Dirt sinks into her nails. There are feet and hands and knees. She shouts out, the sound grinding out of her throat, pure frustration.

They are stronger than her. Together, they are.

She needs to fight them separately.

Kara tucks her head into her knees, coils her muscles. Pulls all her strength in, then kicks up, into the sky, the two flying apart before flying after her. Kara ducks and weaves, slamming into one, then the other, never letting them both get too close to her. Like that, she can wear them down. They try to fly at her the same time, but alone, she’s faster, and she hits one away, before the other gets there.

Kara knows her powers more than she knows anything else. She knows how to manipulate the air, how to twist her body and how to put everything she has into her fist, how to shoot beams in bursts. One flies up so high after a punch Kara loses sight of him.

There’s still no sign of the first two.

Spinning in the air, Kara catches the other with a beam of laser, eyes hot and feeling like liquid, hitting her straight in the chest. The woman gives a strangled cry and Kara can see it, then: she’s weaker. That hurt her.

Whereas Kara could do this all day.

The man drops into her view and he catches the woman’s eye. Kara raises her fists.

“Let’s go,” Kara says.

But they hover, not attacking, and Kara hovers there, unsure.

The woman’s hand goes to her ear. “Take two.”

Kara narrows her eyes, her cheeks ablaze and blood coursing. Everything feels on high alert. The two in front of her lose some altitude and Kara lowers herself with them. Sweat coats both of their brows. “What does that mean?”

They grin at her and then, with what seems like a huge effort, fly in different directions.

Kara goes to fly after the woman. To dig her hand into her shirt and do the same with the man. They’re weak. It’s obvious. Slow. She can fly them down and collect the other two and take them to the DEO.

But something hits her, hard, from the side, and Kara’s careening into the top floor of a building. She goes through two walls before she manages to stop it, her flight pulling her up short, her knee and hand skidding along the floor under her. She whips her head up.

Abandoned building. Empty room.

Dust, everywhere.

Sunlight spilling from the roof above, filling the room. A building full of holes Kara had just added more to. The wall behind her is half fallen down.

She narrows her eyes and stares through the dust filled holes she just made, light reflecting off it all.

A shadow is stepping through it. Someone strong. The force that hit her had hit hard.

Kara stands, achingly deliberate. The dust is still whirling, swirling around and that figure is walking closer.

“Supergirl.”

That voice.

Kara’s eyes widen. “Lena?”

And it is. Lena steps through the last hole, her chin jutted out and her hands at her side. Her jaw is set, hard. Kara’s heart is racing in her chest, thumping against her ribs.

“What have you done?” Kara asks, through a throat so tight she’s surprised she can speak at all.

Lena laughs, the sound hollow and nothing of the sound echoing in her eyes. “What have _I_ done?” She looks down at her hands, balled into fists, and swings one wide. It connects with the edge of the hole behind her and Kara steps forward, instinctual. But there’s no scream of pain. No sound of shattering bone. No blood, the smell of iron heavy in the air. Lena doesn’t even flinch. Instead, brick and mortar spew out, chips of cement flying. “Apparently, a lot.”

There’s something in her voice, as she stares at her hand, that Kara just can’t place. “Why?” she asks.

Lena looks up, her eyes painfully green and bright. Kara can hear Lena’s heart, again. Beating just slightly too fast. She hates herself, and the fact that relief is blooming through her chest at the sight of her. At the eyes focussed so intently on her own; the colour one Kara had tried to match the other night, sleepless in bed. Mixing paints until she gave up and flew out her window, looking for someone to save.

Lena cocks her head. “Don’t stop asking that question.”

And then she runs at Kara, so fast Kara can barely follow her. They collide, Kara’s boots digging into the floor to push back, to push away from the hole behind her, to stop them falling out of it, to avoid causing any more damage outside.

Maybe to keep Lena here, with her, for just a second longer.

She needs to understand.

Kara’s hands close over Lena’s shoulders, and it’s so strange to not hold back. To feel skin that doesn’t give under her hands. To squeeze as hard she can, to push out with her palms, to push her back.

Lena’s fingers curl around Kara’s bicep, crushingly hard.

She’s stronger than the others. Just.

Still not as strong as Kara. Just.

But still, Kara holds back, and knows she shouldn’t. Can practically hear Alex telling her not to be an idiot. Their foreheads press together, meet in the middle of a struggle of strength and Kara raises her gaze.

Lena is staring intently at her.

Kara gives a burst of strength and runs her backwards. They miss the hole already there and create a new one, flying through it until Lena’s on her back, Kara’s knees either side of her hips. They blink at each other, covered in dust, and Kara stupidly thinks of the desk. Of the sun streaming against Lena’s back, of the feel of her body straddling Kara’s, her lips at the softness of her throat. Lena’s fist flies out and Kara is so unprepared for it, it catches her in the face, her head whipping back.

She catches Lena’s hand in her own, and the other as it swings towards Kara’s ear, holding her arms out either side, one of Lena’s fists in each hand. They stare at each other and Kara wants to yell at her. To scream out this rage in her throat. Why her blood? Why is her mother doing this? Why use Kara like she has? What is Lena playing at? Is Lena playing her?

Instead what comes out is, “What the _hell_ is going on Lena?”

Lena is breathing hard, though it must be mostly out of habit if she has whatever it is pumping through her blood. But she sets her jaw, gives a shake of her head and sits up fast, her forehead ramming into Kara’s and sending her backwards, sliding along the floor. And Lena flies—it looks so _wrong_ , so strange, so completely implausible, but she does—and this time, it’s her on top of Kara, fingers wrapped around Kara’s wrists over her head, weight bearing down and face a foot away. Their eyes bore into each other and Kara could twist free. She could get out of this.

It would be easy.

But she lies there.

“Fight back,” Lena hisses, her cheeks streaked pink under the white of destroyed walls.

Kara just stares at her.

“Supergirl.” And there it is. Not Kara. Despite being here. Despite having Kara’s blood seeping into her muscles. Despite leaving for her mother. There that is. Undeniable truth. Whether to save for later or not, Lena is not giving her away. Yet. Why? “Fight. Back.”

Lena lifts her hands up and slams them down against the floor.

Kara shakes her head. “No.”

The fingers around her wrist let go and Lena hits her. There’s no real strength in it at all. “Fight back!”

Lena came for a fight. Or was sent for one. Sent to distract her while the others got away. To test her powers too? Kara has no idea. Her head is spinning, thoughts racing in her head.

Desperation is tinging Lena’s eyes now. It’s better than nothing.

“No.” Kara shakes her head.

Lena hits her again and the force of it doesn’t even turn Kara’s head. “Damn it, Supergirl.”

And her voice is shredded, raw, as raw as the look in her eyes as she’d followed her mother out when her mother had realised there was _something_ between Supergirl and Lena.

So Kara surges up, her hand on one of the thighs either side of Kara’s hips, the other coming up to thread into Lena’s hair. Lena meets her, not even shocked, a hand gripping the back of Kara’s neck, fingers of her other gripping her suit, over the ‘S’ to tug her closer. Their lips meet and Kara feels starved for this feeling. Lena is arching into her, her lips insistent and tongue grazing Kara’s and tugging a moan from the back of her throat. Kara could sob into it, this feeling, and she has no idea why.

None of this confirms anything.

She has no idea which side Lena is walking, but right there she’s real, with power thrumming through her that isn’t supposed to be there. But her kiss is the same, the same desperation to her mouth, the same giving of something Kara didn’t know a person could give.

She wants to pull of the shirt Lena’s wearing. Wants to tug it aside and bite at the skin she finds.

But then Lena is pulling back, her lips swollen. She’s breathless and beautiful and dangerous and everything Kara shouldn’t want in the world. 

Her lips graze Kara’s ear. “They're listening." Her voice so low that even Kara barely hears her.

And she’s pulled back again, her fingers still on the back of Kara’s neck, one of Kara’s hands still in her hair. The thigh under her hand feels stronger than before, more muscular and Lena’s eyes aren’t guarded anymore: they’re a pool of things Kara only has a split second to pick at. Lust, in the wide blown pupils. Fear. Something breakable.

And then she’s gone, in a blink. And for a few seconds, Kara sits stunned, the feel of Lena’s lips against her own still ghosting over her nerves. Words that still haven’t fully settled into her brain.

Those few seconds are enough. When Kara shoots through the hole above her, and into the sky, there’s no sign of Lena.

She’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your feedback and kudos are always so appreciated :)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year lovely people! I hope you all understand how awesome your feedback has been and I adore reading your thoughts and guess on all of this. Hope you enjoy!

“What the hell, Supergirl?”

There’s fire blazing in Alex’s eye and Kara is suddenly glad they’re at the DEO where Alex can’t tear her a new one completely. Even with her hands on her hips and her cape billowing behind her after landing, Kara’s struggling to keep her Supergirl persona strong. That look is deadly. And even without Alex’s glare, she already feels like she’s about to shatter apart from the inside out. The last hour has left her shaken, unsure. Her blood is being used for something heinous. Lillian has something planned, something Kara just can’t see the end of, no matter how much she tries. Lena is a part of it. In some way, whatever way, she’s involved and Kara’s blood made Lena fly, punch through walls, able to push Kara across a room.

There was a fury in the green depth of her eye, something Kara hadn’t seen before.

Her kiss had been bruising.

Delicious.

But there are other things Kara really needs to be thinking about. Like how she’s extremely grateful right then that Alex can’t shoot laser beams from her eye, because she’s fairly certain she would if she could.

“What?” Kara asks, knowing full well what.

“You just went radio silent. Then flew off into who knows what.” Alex is about to explode. Red is slashed across her cheeks.

“I—”

“There was no knowing the risk and you didn’t even wait for confirmation.”

“I—”

“You endangered yourself, those kidnapped people, and the entire city”

“I—” Kara is deflating and she’s supremely happy not many people are around.

Except for Winn , who’s squashing himself down into his computer chair and trying to pretend he’s not listening.

“Protocol dictates you leave your coms on. You went silent, almost destroyed a park then flew into an abandoned building. We couldn’t get eyes on you and had no way of knowing what kind of assistance you needed.”

“Alex, I—”

“No, the next time you want—”

“Agent Danvers, they need you in the downstairs lab.”

Kara has never been so happy to see J’Onn. Ever. She tries to flash him a smile but is met with his stone-face and it quickly fades from her lips.

Alex turns to him. “Do they? Or do you just need me to lower my voice and stop attacking Supergirl?”

“You choose.” He stares straight at her in the way only J’Onn can when Alex is all rage.

Finally, Alex gives a nod. “I’ll calm down.”

Her jaw is set so tight she may just crack a tooth. Kara offers her a weak smile and Alex at least gives a slight roll of her eyes. Small enough so J’Onn can’t see It, but enough that Kara feels that tightly wound feeling in her stomach ease just a little. Right then, she wants to spill everything to her sister. To tell her it all. Everything about Lena. All the parts she’s held back. But, really, she had no idea how to shape them. What tone to paint them with. Kara has no idea how she feels, or how she’s _supposed_ to feel. All she does know is Lena is on the wrong side and Kara can feel her kiss like a tattoo on her lips. She feels branded with Lena, the heat of her fingers on her skin, the press of her tongue in Kara’s mouth.

The burn of her eyes and the strike of those words. _They’re listening._

Lena has to be on their side.

But then why did she go back to them?

Why did she go to start with? Why does she have those powers solidifying through her muscles?

Then J’Onn’s eyes are on her again, dark and concerned and just a little bit cranky. “Agent Danvers is right.”

Kara sucks in a breath. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Alex snorts. “Obviously.”

The steady look J’Onn gives Alex makes her straighten her shoulders. He turns back to Kara. “What happened?”

So Kara tells them. Everything. She hesitates at the part about Lena. She would prefer to not tell them. To keep Lena more in the dark. An unknown. She just knows how they’ll react. But of course she tells them—she has to. But nothing about the stormy kiss that’s still tugging Kara apart at the seams.

“And then, when we were fighting she, uh—she got close to my ear and whispered that they were listening. And flew off.”

“You didn’t chase her?” The flint of anger is gone from Alex’s eyes now. Instead she’s leaning back against a table, her arms crossed. “And see where they were?”

“Well, if I had I would have surly been captured. My coms were off and I had no idea how many would be at their hideout.”

“Right, because you always think those things through.” Alex narrows her eyes. “That’s not why.”

Damn. “Yeah, okay. Lena threw me backwards—” tiny lie, though Kara hates to lie to Alex at all no matter the size “—and by the time I got out of the rubble she was gone.”

J’Onn gives the tiny facial muscle twitch he does when he’s disappointed. “We missed an opportunity there.”

“So.” Alex stands up. “They’ve used your blood. And either kidnapped—though I would say more recruited, with the hopes of inflaming the anger towards alien supporters while they were missing—alien haters and performing experiments on them.”

“With my blood.”

Winn flinches at how Kara grinds it out and she’s almost forgotten he’s there. “Yeah. On that.” He clears his throat and the three of them look at him. “We still have no real idea how.”

Kara isn’t surprised. “Can we find out?”

“Only by, well,” Alex has that look on her face that means she knows Kara isn’t going to like what she’s about to suggest, “experimenting on the sample we took from you.”

“No.” Kara crosses her arms.

“We don’t want to,” Alex steps forward, a few feet between them, and Kara can feel her slipping into sister mode there, where they aren’t supposed to. “Especially as to really know how we’d have to test it on someone.”

“No.” Kara shakes her head. “I mean it. It won’t lead to anywhere good.”

J’Onn gives a nod “Okay. No. Then we need to talk about the fact that, so far, they haven’t perfected it.”

“They grew weaker." Kara looks at him. "Right at the end. Lena was sent as a distraction, so they could escape.” And Kara hates that it worked.

“One that worked well.” There’s something in Alex’s voice that makes Kara’s heart speed up a little. “Also, we had eyes on you when those two pulled you into ground.”

“They just never reappeared,” Kara says. She'd looked for them constantly, dreaded it, really. Four were too many.

“That’s because they had to crawl out of the hole. And by the time they did, the other two were flying off. They heard something in coms in their ear and took off too.”

“They had to crawl out?” Kara hadn't seen that. Interesting, really. That they couldn't fly out. “Could it be because there was no sun in the hole?”

Alex looks to Winn who straightens up and nods. “That’s what we’re thinking. So we can see two problems they have, that are good for us: however they’re doing it isn’t permanent. They either drain their powers as they use them, or they wear off over time. Too bad there’s no battery signal on their head.” He grins and no one responds, so he clears his throat. “That, and it would seem they need to be in direct sunlight.”

“But Lena hit you into a building,” Alex’s eyes are on Kara like an arrow. “Wouldn’t hers have stopped working?”

“There were holes everywhere. The entire place was full of light.”

“That explains that then.” Winn uses his foot to spin himself back and forth. “So, I guess we know whose side Lena’s on.”

“Ours.” Kara says, just as Alex and J’Onn says, “Theirs.”

Winn looks between them all. “Or not.”

“She warned me they were listening.” Kara crosses her arms again.

“That’s literally the only piece of proof you have.” Alex and J’Onn are standing shoulder to shoulder and Kara wants to blast them apart with a squint of her eyes. Alex adds, “But the facts against her are piling up.” She glances at J’Onn before back to Kara. “I’m sorry, Supergirl, but I’m afraid that doesn’t prove anything.”

Kara presses her lips together. The words are clambering at her throat again. The one solid piece of evidence, that to Kara, screams Lena’s innocence. But she swallows them down. “Why did she warn me people are listening? Like she wanted to tell me something but couldn’t.”

Alex and J’Onn share a look again and Winn is busy avoiding eye contact with everyone. Alex shrugs. “It looks like she’s playing you. Why go with her mother? Why accept the experimental powers? Why return there when she’d left, if she really wanted to leave?”

There’s nothing to say to that. But Kara’s mouth opens like she has something, anyway. She snaps it shut. “Do you need me?”

J’Onn actually looks surprised. “Pressing places to be with this new reign of terror on the loose, Supergirl?”

“Work.”

Which is true. She'll lose her job if she misses much more time. At least she can have a blow-by-blow account of the fight in the part and pretend she'd been covering it. But mostly, she wants to get away from the press of Alex's gaze.

He gives a nod. “Okay. Stay contactable. We’re going to have Agent Danvers and the lab look into how they could have managed what they did and how we can fight it—” Kara opens her mouth and he keeps speaking before she can say anything “— _without_ using your blood.”

“Fine.” Kara can’t look at Alex.

She can feel Alex’s eyes on her, but if she meets it, Kara’s going to either burst into tears or into a rage filled rant. Alex seems so desperate to dismiss Lena, to see none of the evidence that maybe Lena isn’t with Cadmus. Or at least, isn’t _as_ with them as she appears.

Kara turns and runs, flying out of the building as fast as she can.

What’s worse, is her words leave echoes of doubt in Kara’s mind, feeding what’s already there.

And the only thing she can cling to to help, the knowledge that Lena knows Kara’s identity, that Lena kissed her when it made no sense to, Alex can’t know.

Kara isn’t even sure if knowing that would change Alex’s mind.

 

* * *

 

Work is easy to get lost in. She pulls on a soft sweater and comfortable jeans, and slips on her glasses and lets herself be Kara Danvers. Snapper snaps at them all about the breaking story and the report that four of the missing anti-alien people turned up with powers. And seemed pleased with them

“They seemed focused on taking down Supergirl. What’s their angle? Are they out to show the true dangers of what these powers can do? Or are they out to level the playing field?” His glasses are shoved up on his head and he’s glaring around at them all. “So? Go!”

The teams jumps and scatters. Kara’s on interviewing eye witnesses and gratefully slips out from James’ watchful eye to go interview.

She throws herself into it. She speaks with people who are pro-alien but terrified the other side has this up their sleeve now. "Are there more of them?" the ask. "There are at least two others missing?"

When she comes to anti-alien interviews, they crow at showing the other side some of their own medicine. Kara’s eye twitches and she tries to stay as neutral as possible.

It’s impossible.

Everyone is debating how they managed it. The general public don’t know they took Supergirl’s blood. And every time Kara thinks of it, her temperature spikes and her fist curls. She breaks three pens today alone, the ink spilling over her skin and staining her sweater. She hates that her blood is being used. It feels like a violation. Like someone has stripped her of something that’s _hers_ and adorned it themselves, wearing it all wrong.

All the while her skin itches. She wants to fly, to try and trace Lena’s movements. To find where she went. Where is their base? What is Lillian’s master plan? Is she purely trying to create anarchy to better push forward her agenda? What is she trying to do? It seems sloppy, rushed. Has she reached that point?

Kara aches to speak to Lena. To be back in that old building and pull her close her again. Her mind was calm, then. The turmoil of questioning, the wondering if Lena was on their side or not calmed the second Lena’s mouth was on her own.

Maybe she is being played.

She feels sick with this secret.

Alex asks her to meet at the alien bar when she finishes, and Kara walks in after eight, finally leaving work, which is still chaos. The bar is filled with a twitchy atmosphere, everyone in there unsure what’s safe and what not. Kara pulls her glasses down and does a quick sweep.

No explosives

Alex is at the bar, her head bent forward, a smile on her face so bright Kara wants to etch it into her brain. Her forehead is almost touching Maggie’s, drinks between them pressed together, their fingers brushing. Maggie murmurs something and Kara purposefully doesn’t listen, but she does overhear the laugh that falls from Alex’s lips so easily.

Their eyes are alight with each other and Kara has never seen her sister so happy.

So…herself.

There’s nothing dark lingering in her eye. Just the line of her throat as she drops her head back to laugh even louder and Maggie grins at her, as if happy with herself that she made Alex Danvers laugh.

Kara wanted to not like the woman a little longer. To drag on the overly-pleasant-but-really-death-smile thing and make sure that Maggie knows to never hurt Alex. Because if she does Kara may just throw her into the sun.

Joking.

Kind of.

But there’s something fragile in Maggie’s face that Kara has seen in Alex, and she realises, then, that maybe Maggie is just as far gone as Alex is.

As she should be.

Kara doesn’t want to interrupt. She shifts from foot to foot and misses, right then, the quiet of Lena’s office. The sofa they sat on with mere feet between them. The grin on Lena’s face as she’d drop her head into her hand and shake her head at something Kara had said. The light that streamed through the window, or the night sky it showed in all its glory.

Having Lena’s friendship and then…whatever they had…was like having something of her own. Something Kara can’t remember ever having. There was no Lucy Lane to confuse things, no Cat Grant and her…ego? Her empire? Her need to know who Supergirl _really_ was that left Kara’s heart pounding too hard against her ribs.

Lena was confusing, and a Luthor, and all of that.

But she’d been Kara’s friend.

A place to go when she felt like this, out of step and unsure.

Something hers.

And then she became a confusing blur of so much more that was twisted in with hurt feelings about mothers and secret identities, and Kara just wanted to go back to that office and smiling at each other over the desk.

“A dime for your thoughts?”

Kara jumped and turned, Mon-El grinning at her with his perfectly chiseled face that Kara wishes, then, she was actually attracted to because it would be a hell of a lot simpler than what she’s dealing with. But he’s a bit of a bumbling idiot and Kara feels like she maybe has a brother in him. Which makes the way he’s watching her a little weird. “It’s a penny.”

“What?” he asks.

“A penny for your thoughts. Not a dime.”

He blinks. “Oh. Earth is full of strange expressions.” He waves a hand dismissively. “Like the other day, someone told someone else to calm their tits. How can mammary glands _not_ be calm?.” Kara wonders how fast she can get away from this conversation. “But still, my meaning was clear: everything okay?”

Kara nods, mind still on over-excited breasts. Which makes her thoughts jump to Lena again and she fiddles with her glasses. “Yes. Fine. Thanks, Mon-El.”

He shrugs. “No problem. Because, I just haven’t seen you around much. And today you fought, well, yourself, in a lot of ways. That had to be weird.”

“It was. But I’m fine.” She smiled then, and he smiles back. “Really.”

“Good. Can I buy you a drink?” And there’s something soft in his eyes and Kara wants to put as much space between them as she can.

She takes a small step back, trying to keep her smile polite. “After the way my head hurt last time, no, thank you.”

“We can drink water.”

And he’s so sincere. “Mon-El…”

He blinks. “Oh.”

“I—”

“No. No.” He grins at her, then, widely. Too widely. He crosses his arms over his chest and Kara thinks of a kicked puppy, guilt flaring in her stomach for no reason. “It’s okay.”

She winces. “I’m sorry.”

“I am. Sorry, I mean. I misread. I thought I remembered, when I was sick, we—”

“We did. Well, you did me. I was kind of…shocked.”

“Oh. Well. Then really, I’m sorry. I thought…” He looks at her again, as if still hoping for something.

“No. Sorry. I—can we be friends?”

She hates that line. Like she’s offering something second best. Which she isn’t. Kara _likes_ Mon-El. He’s funny and a bit of a mess and trying so hard. Friendship, to her, is never second best.

He nods. “Of course.” He takes a long sip of his beer, his movements jolty. “So, I’m just going to go. Over there.”

And he walks away, to a far corner of the bar. Kara watches him go and again, wonders how much easier that would be, to be with him. It makes sense, in a lot of ways. But there’s nothing there. No flutter, like she had with James. No losing her senses when he smiles at her like she did every time James had. No swoop in her stomach when his eyes are on her like with Lena…

“Are you okay?” Kara jumps again and turns to see Alex. “Sorry.”

“You know, I have super hearing. I shouldn’t be able to be sneaked up on.”

Alex hands her a glass of coke and shrugs. “You get lost in your thoughts. And speaking of…” She raises her eyebrows and Kara takes a gulp of her drink. Alex sighs. “Mon-El?”

“I made it clear I’m not interested.”

Alex sucks in a breath and grimaces. “How’d he take it?”

“Well, I think.”

“And what about James?”

“What about him?”

“Kara. You have three men almost beating their chests to be with you.”

“What?” Kara sputters a little, shifting her glasses again and shaking her head. “I do not.”

Alex is just staring at her still, those judgmental eyebrows crawling up her forehead. “You seriously haven’t noticed?”

“Noticed what?”

“Oh my God. You haven’t. You are so clueless it physically hurts me. Winn, James and Mon-El are all besotted with you.”

“No.”

“Well, yeah.” Alex sips her beer. Maggie is over by the pool table sneaking them looks as she sets it up. “And all you were doing was spending time with Lena Luthor and not noticing….” Alex’s mouth is open. She’s staring at Kara like she just sprouted another head and Kara actually looks behind her to see if someone’s jumped up. “Kara.” Her voice is stony and Kara feels like she’s back in the DEO that morning. “Kara, no.”

“What?”

“Lena?”

Oh, no. Kara’s eyes go wide and before she can even attempt to lie, Alex’s fingers are curling around her bicep and she’s tugging her through the bar. It would be so easy to just not move. It wouldn’t require any effort, at all. To plant herself and watch Alex tug futilely on her arm. But one, it would be a giveaway, and two it would just delay the inevitable.

Their glasses are left behind on the bar and they emerge in an alley and Alex rounds on her, her arms crossed.

“Well?” Alex’s nostrils are actually flaring and she’s staring at Kara expectantly.

“Well what?”

“Is anyone around?”

Kara quickly scans the area. The closest people are in the bar. It's tempting to say yes. “No.”

“Are you, or are you not, into Lena Luthor?”

Alex is staring at her. Kara is staring at Alex. It feels like all the air is gone from the foul smelling alley.

This conversation is too scary. Kara bends her knees and takes off into the air. Stupid Alex’s stupid reflexes are too fast and her fingers grab Kara’s ankle.

“Oh no you don’t.”

Kara floats for a second several feet off the ground, Alex dangling from her ankle and showing no sign of letting of letting go. She glares down and Alex glares up and finally Kara huffs and lowers herself, Alex letting go when her feet are back on the asphalt seconds before Kara’s are back down also.

They both cross their arms and narrow their eyes at each other. “Real mature, Kara.”

There’s not a lot she can say to that, because it really hadn’t been. “What do you want me to say, Alex?”

“I want to know what the hell is going on.”

Kara’s lips press together. She fidgets with her glasses. The urge rises up in her fingertips to tug her shirt away and stand with her hands on her hips, her Supergirl outfit bolstering her. That wouldn’t work on Alex though. It never does. “I’ve-been-making-out-with-Lena-Luthor.” She blurts the words out so fast she hopes Alex can’t pick them apart individually and discern the meaning.

But because she’s Alex, she does. Her eyes go wide. “You what?”

She’s shouting. That’s never good.

Kara winces. “I just, it happened before. And now it’s all, a mess. And I just—I don’t know what side she’s on.” Alex is just staring at her. “I didn’t mean to. She kissed me, the night she turned her mother in, and she was so conflicted and hurt. And I was still, processing, about what my father had done.” Alex blinked. That’s a good sign. Can you blink while having a stroke? But she still says nothing and Kara isn’t good with long silences directed at her. “And, uh, I freaked out. And Then it happened again, right before you came in and told us her mother had escaped.” Alex actually looks grossed out then. Possibly at the thought of interrupting them. But it’s better than nothing. Though she’s still just staring. “And then, uh, we slept together. Kind of. Accidentally.”

“You _accidentally_ slept together?”

Well. At least she’s speaking. “Well, I mean, it wasn’t planned. But, yeah.”

“You’ve been _sleeping_ with Lena Luthor.”

“I don’t know if you’d say it like that. It was just the once. Everything kind of, went all crazy after that.” Kara hates that Alex is looking at her like that, but it feels good to not be lying.

Alex pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose and takes a deep breath. When she opens her eyes again, she asks, “Right. And you never told me any of this because?”

“Uh—it was none of your business?” Alex’s eyebrows rise again. “It wasn’t! And I didn’t know what to tell you. It had barely happened when everything else started.”

“Wait." Alex looks far too serious now. "Who’s been sleeping with Lena Luthor? Kara Danvers or Supergirl?”

Here we go. “Both?” Alex is going extremely red. “She kind of, guessed. Who I am. She knows.”

“She knows?” And there’s the shouting again. “Lena Luthor, who is on the other side, knows your secret identity and you what, didn’t think of mentioning it?”

“I did think of it!”

“And?”

“And, well, didn’t tell you,” Kara finishes lamely.

How does she explain it’s her secret? The proof she holds close when she’s got no idea if Lena Luthor is on their side or not?

“How could you not mention that?” Alex actually sounds pissed. And a little hurt.

“Alex.” Kara throws her arms up and leans back against the dirty brick wall. Alex stays in the middle of the alley, frustration boiling over in every movement. “She had the chance, to tell her mother. In the apartment when they took my blood. Since then. But Lillian doesn’t know. If she did, she would have targeted me. Or you! Or CatCo.” Kara sucks in a breath, one palm flat against the brick. “But she hasn’t. Lena's kept the secret. Why would she do that?”

Alex puffs out a breath, blowing hair off her cheek. “I don’t know.” She bites her lips, thinking. “To confuse you? To make you second guess everything? To throw you off track?”

“Why are you so focused on Lena being evil?”

“Why do you believe she's not so easily?”

They glare at each other again, red blooming over Alex’s cheeks and Kara’s fingers curling against the brick. She feels some of it crumble and quickly relaxes. She needs to punch something.

Finally, Kara speaks. “I’m not dismissing that she could very easily be with Cadmus. I’m not so naive.” Alex rolls her eyes and that hurts more than everything else. That was what Lillian had called her. And apparently Alex thinks so, too. “I’m not, Alex. But you haven’t seen everything I have. There was something about the way she was acting in the apartment that night. And this morning, she kissed me, and then told me they were listening. Something isn’t right.”

Kara can feel it. She’s just not sure what it is.

Alex doesn’t believe her. Her face is full of skepticism. “I’m sorry Kara. I just think she’s playing you. Your judgement is completely clouded.”

“Can’t you trust me, Alex? On this?”

And for a second, Kara thinks she’s going to flat out say no and just the thought makes Kara feel like her chest is going to crack open. But Alex lets out a long breath. “I don’t know, Kara. I’m sorry.”

“Can you at least try?”

“Fine. Fine.” Alex gives a nod. “I can try. But I’m worried.” She crosses her arms. “Anything else?”

Kara's face must give something away. "Uh..."

"What?"

"Lillian Luthor knows about Lena and I.” Kara actually thinks Alex may really be having a stroke then. She goes extremely pale.

“She what?”

“She knows.”

“And you really think that she hasn’t gotten it out of Lena, your identity?” Before Kara can interrupt, Alex rushes on to speak, “Voluntarily or not?”

“I really don’t.”

“This is such a mess, Kara.”

“I know.”

"Do you?"

"Yes!" 

The indignant tone must really hit Alex, because something relaxes in her shoulder and she cocks her head to look at Kara.

“Are you okay?” And Alex’s entire demeanour changes. Like she’s shed of the DEO and now Kara's sister is looking back at her.

There’s a lump in Kara’s throat and she tries to shrug like it’s nothing. “I don’t know.”

“Kara.”

“Like you said. It’s a mess. The Lena situation is a mess, Cadmus has turned this city against itself, and my blood—they took my blood and they’re _using_ it.”

And then Alex is there, tugging her into a hug and Kara lets her. She lets Alex’s arms wrap around her and she buries her face into Alex’s neck, holding her as tightly as she dares.

“You are such an idiot, Kara.”

The words are full of affection and Kara scoffs a laugh into Alex’s hair.

“Alex?” The pull apart and spin around. Maggie’s head is sticking around the door. “I’m sorry, but you need to come watch this.”

They follow her through to the bar. Everyone in the room is staring up at the television. Kara’s entire body tenses and Alex’s, her arm against Kara’s, does the same.

A Cadmus video is playing.

 _“…Cadmus is everywhere. Everywhere is Cadmus. The aliens have arrived and think they can settle in and slowly infiltrate the world.”_ Shots one after the other of alien offenders, selling weapons, things exploding, alien weaponry, green skin, blue skin—anything different. _“They arrive with powers and think themselves above the law. Above humanity. They think themselves better. Those who sympathise with the integration of these invaders are as bad as the invaders themselves. We tried to eliminate them.”_ An image of the rocket going off over the city with no effect, Supergirl above the city next to the rocket. _“We tried to do it the easy way. But now, we have to fight power with power.”_ A shot of the four anti-alien people flying over the city, a shot of them dragging Kara into the ground in an explosion of grass and dirt, the earth shaking _. “They want a war? We will have a war. We are still human, but better. Ready to fight. Join us. Join the fight. We are recruiting and know who are truly loyal. Help us bring down the alien scum that wish to make this planet theirs. There can be enough of us to make an army. Choose the right side. Choose humanity. We are Cadmus.”_

The words cut off and the TV goes dark. The bar is silent but for the uncomfortable shifting of bodies.

Alex looks at her. Kara swallows.

They need to stop this.


	9. Chapter 9

The city sinks into a nightmare.

Life doesn’t stop. Everyone works. Does their shopping. They pay their taxes—Kara assumes. But fights erupt everywhere. Protests turn violent. And then there is a rash of alien murders over three days, all during daylight.

Kara stands in the DEO, her hands balled at her side. The monitors above are muted news reports, reporters on site, anchors reading off numbers as if each one is not a stab in their gut. Almost every alien death has been someone peaceful, trying to live their life on Earth. Another bomb went off in another hospital, targeting the ward most aliens were put. Another in a school.

“We need to do something.”

Kara’s stating the obvious, she knows that. She’s been out there as often as she can, clashing in fights with anti-alien groups now brimming with stolen powers. She feels like spends all day wearing them down until their powers have been depleted. They’ve managed, that way, to capture one or two, but not a single one will talk.

Alex’s shoulder to shoulder with her and Kara presses into her, just slightly. They’ve barely seen each other with the craziness of the last forty-eight hours. Not something Kara has had time to dwell on, but she can’t help but notice that when they do see each other, Alex is a little reserved, held back.

All because Kara accidentally slept with Lena Luthor.

Or maybe Kara’s reading too much into it, and Alex is simply preoccupied with the insanity outside, like they all are. Everyone is sleep deprived, pushed to the limit. Kara’s been juggling her CatCo duties with those of Supergirl and falling miserably short at CatCo. The night before she went as far as to snap some photos from above and use them for a piece, claiming an anonymous source simply to get herself on Snapper’s good side. Night is an easier time, as the Super Cads—a name coined early on that stuck and leaves a bad taste in Kara’s mouth—still only appear during the day, and still can’t maintain their powers. The Cadmus scientist’s apparently can’t iron out those kinks.

But the night is full of humans who took Cadmus’ words to heart.

“How are they always escaping you?” Alex murmurs.

“You know how.” Kara narrows her eyes at the screen. The alien body count keeps rising, in attacks from the Super Cads and from humans. There have been several civilian deaths. “They’re completely synchronised. They get worn down fighting J’Onn or I, or both, and create a diversion with another group of them, or another bomb, or another attack and we have to make the choice between chasing the weakened ones back to their base or stop what they’re doing.” Kara is exhausted. Like she was when she lost her powers for the second time within a few days. It’s in her bones, this exhaustion, seeping in. Constant battles in which she fights people as strong as she is, more so when together, until something in them drains. Running between her two lives and failing in both. Watching her city tear itself apart. Raising cheers as Supergirl and also jeers.

This needs to end. Soon.

But they have zero answers.

“No. I know. I get it. I was just thinking out loud.” She sighs and Kara looks at her, the dark smudges under her eyes. The furrows in her brow that have been a permanent fixture the last few days.

“Hey.” Kara nudges her until Alex turns and meets her gaze. Kara smiles. “We always come out on top.”

Alex’s lips curve up. “Yeah. We do.”

There’s something strained about both their smiles, but Kara clings to them nevertheless. They need them. All they’ve been doing is chasing their tails, jumping from one thing to the next without having time to think.

It’s two o’clock in the afternoon. “Why has there been absolutely no sign of the Super Cads?”

Alex snorts. “I hate that name.” She squinted at the screens. “I don’t know. It’s strange. They’ve been out the moment the sun is up the last two mornings.”

“They’re planning something.” Kara knows it’s been coming. They all do. They’ve just forgotten it amongst the chaos of the last few days.

Maggie’s been in the forefront with the police trying to balance the protests and human population. Arrests have been made constantly. The DEO have been trying to keep the alien side calm—not easy when most are terrified and others angry—while Kara and J’Onn manage the Super Cads.

“They must be.” Alex’s eyes are back on the monitors. “But what?”

“Ah—everyone?” Winn is sitting straight up, staring down at the screen in front of him. “We have incoming.”

Kara steps forward. “How many?”

“Six of the Super Cads—great name, by the way—coming in fast.”

J’Onn turns to Kara. “You ready?”

She nods at him. “Let’s go.”

In her pocket, Alex’s phone rings. She answers is quickly. Kara can hear the conversation and dread catches in her chest. Alex hangs up and looks around the room. “Alien and human clash near the main square. It’s huge. We’re needed.”

J’Onn morphs, the red glowing briefly until he’s in his green martian form. “Agent Danvers. You’re on point for that. Supergirl and I will take the incoming Super Cads.”

Alex nods and turns to get her teams together. Kara can hear her, as she and J’Onn take off through the window, muttering, “I really hate that fucking name.”

They pause above the city, their capes billowing behind them.

“Where are they?” J’Onn asks.

Kara listens. Odd location for them to be, when the action is going down in the centre. She looks at J’Onn. “The far side of town, near factories.”

They start towards it, side by side.

“There’s a squat of aliens there,” he says. They’re going so fast she’s glad for her hearing, the wind tearing at his words. “They’re peaceful. We’ve been working towards integrating them.”

They speed up. He’s not as fast as her, but she doesn’t wait, his words sending urgency through her blood. She lands outside an old factory, the cement almost giving way under her feet. She’s spent days fighting with all of her power, not holding back, and she’s already forgetting how to limit.

She misses the calm from before. If you could call it that.

The five seconds she lands before J’Onn are enough to to assess the situation. Enough to leave her with clench fists and heat burning, ready in her eyes.

The group have ten aliens lined up on their knees. There’s crying. There are young. Most are young. One is bleeding. The Super Cads turn to her. Most are grinning.

None are ones she’s met before.

Which means their numbers are growing. Cadmus is growing in strength, more and more each day. And fast.

J’Onn lands next to her, more softly than she had.

Their grins grow.

“Run.” Kara shouts it and hopes they’ll listen. That they aren’t too injured or scared to stand and make themselves scarce. Before the Super Cads can move, she hits two with laser right in their chests, sending them back to slam into walls behind them. J’Onn hits two at once, flying into them with such force they all careen away. The other two, Kara launches herself at.

It’s a mess, two against six.

But J’Onn and Kara are trained. Their powers sit over them easily. Like they were born with them. The others are unsteady, brute strength that, like Alex drummed into her, doesn’t get you very far when you’re against a matched opponent.

The aliens have ran and it’s just the six of them with dust exploding around as they tear through columns and debris. The Super Cads know to avoid excessive shadow. To try and stay out of the buildings. Kara throws them through, their powers seeming to seep out them, preventing them from being hurt, but leaving them powerless and giving her time to fight others while they clamber back outside.

The fight goes longer than normal.

J’Onn is pinned under three and Kara throws a dumpster at the two running at her, her fist slamming into another and leaving her free to ram herself into the ones kicking at J’Onn.

Her blood is boiling.

Who knows what they’d been going to do to the aliens. Execution? Experiments for Cadmus?

All of it leaves her ill.

Two drag her to the ground and the other flies down at her as fast as she can, a knee driving into her gut and actually leaving Kara winded. She sees red and responds with a surge of strength, the ground rippling out from under her as she pushes them off her and launches into the air. The sun is beating down on them all, hot and bright.

And, finally, sweat appears on their brows. They slow.

Their hits don’t send her and J’Onn flying anymore. But Kara and J’Onn’s hurt them.

And then three take off.

And three stay.

And with a look at her, J’Onn goes after the ones that fled.

The three left circle Kara, so much like that first time, and she raises her fists, watching them as they keep an eye on her.

“You’re out of charge.” Kara flicks her hair over her shoulder. Bounces on her heels. “And here I can go all day.”

One of them grins. “That’s the idea.”

Kara pauses. “What?”

They don’t take their eyes off her.

One winks, deep bags under his eyes, his cheeks red with exertion. “Incoming.”

And something slams into her.

J’Onn always says she needs to work on concentrating on more than one thing. On honing her skills in different ways, at different things, at more than one thing at a time.

She’s a long way from managing it.

The force of it sends her sliding on her back and then the person is standing over her, a silhouette in a black body suit. But Kara knows who it is.

She should have seen it coming, really.

“Lena.”

Three shadows are already taking off into the sky.

She’s another distraction.

But the last few days have been different. Other Super Cads causing mayhem and leaving them with no choice but to abandon the ones they started with and go for the others. Lena never appeared after the first time, and Kara tried to keep her thoughts away from her. To not look to the sky for her. To not hope, against everything she should, that Lena would appear.

And now here she is, heels of her black books either side of Kara’s hips, hands on her own and staring down at her.

“Supergirl.”

Lena leans down. So close Kara can smell her, can feel the warmth that radiates of her skin. Out of silhouette, Kara can actually see her features. A jawline Kara’s lips know the curve of. One that’s set tight, no smile to soften the shape. No warmth in that green of her eyes. Her dark hair is pulled into a ponytail, her cheekbones angular.

Lena punches her, and Kara isn’t sure what else she expected.

She’s stronger than before. The way Kara’s head hits the pavement under her shows as much. Lena steps back and Kara pulls her leg up and kicks as hard as she can into Lena’s stomach, sending her backwards and giving Kara time to stand. Her fists are raised and Lena’s already recovered, standing all in black and watching her in a way that Kara’s never seen. There’s something hard in her eye.

“Lena.” Kara swallows. This feels so wrong. “This isn’t you.”

Lena’s lip curls. She raises her fists. “You have no idea who I am.”

Which is exactly what Alex thinks.

Something that Kara should know, but can’t help but ignore. Some part of her knows Lena. Or at least gets her.

Or so she thought.

Lena wastes no time. She runs straight at her, super speed, and Kara matches her, the force of their collision sending out a clap of sound. There’s no slight give. Lena meets her strength for strength and Kara shoots upwards, her hands gripping Lena’s shoulders, Lena a mirror of her. It’s like clutching at steel—or what Kara imagines it’s like for other people. Steel’s always given under her fingertips.

Lena doesn’t.

The fly up, just above the buildings, and Lena’s knee drives into her stomach. Again. And again.

“Lena. Stop.” Kara pushes her away, finally, and they hover with feet between them, Lena’s face impassive. “I can help you.”

“I don’t need help.”

The words are barely out before she’s crashing into Kara again and the trade blow for blow. Hands grip at Kara’s suit over the ‘S’ as Lena hits her and Kara throws her back so hard Lena hits the roof of another building, sending cracks spidering outward before she’s up again and ramming Kara in another direction.

Kara needs to get her into a building. Somewhere no sun infiltrates. It’s all she can think as Lena hits her with the laser right in her stomach and Kara recovers, using her own so they turn in the air, their eyes glowing and lasers pushing back and forth between them, never really gaining any ground.

One of them is screaming with the force of it. Or maybe it’s both of them.

They’ve moved far away and Kara can feel she’s going to blow out her powers and Lena must think the same. They stop at the same time, and Kara waits, again, for Lena to come at her, her eyes glowing ghostly until they fade to normal.

But instead, Lena glances at her wrist. Her fingers curl next to her thigh. A “come at me” gesture that’s barely perceivable. And damn it, Kara’s so angry she does. She slams into her and they go throw a wall of a building, Lena’s fingers clutching her suit again, sprawling over the floor before hitting some old machinery. Kara’s up, her arms ready to defend, but Lena’s standing slowly. Achingly so. Her arms are up in supplication.

What’s going on?

Kara looks around. There are windows everywhere. Sun streaming through. Her powers should still be intact.

“Lena.”

Lena shakes her head and holds a finger to her lips, looking around with quick flicks of her head, her hair whipping near her cheeks. The she turns and walks away in the opposite direction, yanking open a door and pounding down some stairs.

Kara lowers her hands.

Seriously. What the hell is going on?

Kara should leave. She’s here with an unknown who just attacked her with so much rage she can actually feel it. She should report in. Call Alex. Or J’Onn.

Anyone.

Instead she runs after Lena, yanking the door open and pounding after her.

She ends up in the basement, cool and dark and a dirty light that’s somehow still working. No windows. Lena stands in the middle of the room, her arms at her sides, surrounded by crates and boxes.

“Lena? What the hell?”

“We don’t have much time.”

“Time?” Kara has no idea how to react, what to do or say.

“I have a twenty-minute window, and by the time it’s closed I need to be on my way back or they’ll be aware.”

“Aware of what?” Kara takes three steps forward, her boots hollow sounding on the cement floor.

“That I was talking to you.”

Kara crosses her arms. Lena’s expression has completely changed. The set to her jaw is gone, the stony cold in her eyes fading.

She looks like Lena. Like the Lena who gasped into Kara’s mouth on the desk. The one who studied her with a smile on her lips. The one who bit her lip and make heat spread throughout Kara’s body.

“Lena. I don’t understand.”

“I know. It had to be believable. They had to think I was following orders.”

“Weren’t you?” Kara bites the words out, harsh, like a slap.

Lena barely flinches, as if it’s everything she believes she deserves. “I have to.”

“Why?”

“She’s manipulating me. But we don’t have time. That’s not important, you can’t help there. You have to listen to me. I have someone working with me, on the inside. In the base. He’s given me this twenty minutes by sending a virus through their systems. I’m completely unmonitored right now.”

“Why are you here?”

“They sent me to distract you.” Lena takes a step back and sits against a crate, her hands on the edge. Sincerity laces her face in the way that utter anger had ten minutes before. But which is real? Which is Lena? Is any of it? “My mother knows there’s something between us, and everything leading up to now has been to ensure you and the DEO were completely occupied.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know completely. Mother doesn’t trust me. For good reason.”

Is this real? Or is Lena playing her. A trick. A way into the DEO. Into Supergirl.

It’s what Alex would think.

“And why should I trust you?”

Lena cocks her head, a finger tapping on the edge of the crate under her palm. “That’s a good question.” Silence echoes between them. “Kara.” Her name is a clack of sound on Lena’s tongue, intimacy where there’d been none as she’s called her Supergirl for weeks now. It sends an ache through Kara’s stomach, at the memory of hearing it in Lena’s office when she’d least expected to. Kara wants to crack apart at the sound. To fall to pieces. To fall into Lena, who there, now, despite the clothes, despite the last hour, looks soft and like the woman who has the ability to make Kara completely forget herself. Kara is tired. Tired and wants to be rid of this confusion that knots her stomach. “We don’t have time for this. They’re planning something. It’s getting worse. This, super serum, they’ve created. They’re close to making it better. I’m working on delaying it but if I’m detected, it’ll be catastrophic.” The look on her face is deadly serious at the use of such a dramatic word. “They’ll have it smoothed out by tomorrow. Permanent powers. They’ve already figure out how to make them function without being under sunlight.”

“No.” Kara has just seen it. “I saw those others go through walls into buildings and have to climb out.”

They’re cloaked in shadows down here, darkness permeating everything but for that one hanging, dirty light. Yet Lena turns her head then, sending a blast of laser into a crate, wood splinters exploding everywhere. She looks back to Kara, her eyes slowly going back to green. It’s strange, to see that, here, where she looks so much like her. “I’m the first it’s worked on, today. They can’t dose the others with this until tomorrow. They’ve discovered too many doses a day is…deadly. But it’s not permanent. Yet. Until tomorrow, we think.”

Kara can barely breathe. Her powers, permanently, in people who want to eradicate anyone who doesn’t qualify as a part of the human race? “By tomorrow?”

Lena gives a nod. “Yes.”

“Why did your mother want us not paying attention?”

“She’s taking something from L-Corp.” Lena holds up a hand as Kara opens her mouth. “I don’t know what. But whatever she wants, it’s part of their plan.”

“Right now?”

“Yes. They’re probably finished.”

“I have to stop them.”

Kara turns to go, but before she can take a step towards the door, Lena is there, in front of her, the air from her movement the only proof that she moved, playing in Kara’s hair.

“Move, Lena.”

Lena’s hands are on her hips. “There’s no point. It’s done.”

“I can still stop them.” Kara tries to step around her, but Lena steps into her space and Kara sets her jaw. It’s too confusing to be there, with Lena so close. A push and pull, a tugging every which way she can’t handle. A distraction, just like Lillian wants. “Move.”

“It’s done.” And Lena’s voice is just as tight as hers. Heat is radiating off of her, more than Kara has ever felt. Kara can hear her heart, beating too fast, unsteady. “But we have an alternative.”

“And I should just trust you?”

“Yes.”

They glare at each other. Lena justs her chin out and Kara wants then, overwhelmingly, to run her fingers over it and down her jaw, over her neck. Even while she wants to go back to the fury of their fight. The cut and dry of life and death. She’s thrumming with energy and she needs to dispel it, her mind whirring.

“The only chance,” Lena says, “is tonight. It’s all we have. You’ll get a message tonight, encrypted, on your phone. Co-ordinates to the base. We can shut it down again, once more. It’s a risk.” Lena steps forward, sincere and taking up all Kara’s air. “But if you have your DEO…friends ready you could do it.”

“How do I know this isn’t a lie?” Kara feels split in two, no idea what to believe. “Why not have just sent us the co-ordinates tonight with this information? Why go to all this trouble?”

Again, Lena’s reaction isn’t even surprise at the accusation. Her eyes are on Kara’s lips, then back to meet her gaze, something hot in it. “Because you wouldn’t have known it was from me without this. And, I suppose, I hoped, if you knew it was from me, you’d know it wasn’t a trap.” Kara barely blinks, but Lena watches her face, eyes intent. Finally, she gives a slow smile. “Though that may have been too much to hope for.”

Kara wants to disagree. To shake her head and leave. To go check L-Corp. She can all but hear Alex in her head, telling her she’s being played for a fool.

But what alternative is there? They have no information. No way of knowing the plan. Everything is falling apart around them and Lena is all they have.

“Okay.” And Kara wants to pull the word back. To place that trust, right then, seems like insanity. But she means it. “Okay. Tonight. What time should we expect your message?”

“Between ten and eleven. My inside man will disrupt the system, then send the message. He can buy thirty minutes to get the message out, and if you can get in before the thirty minutes are up, you’ll have an easier time getting in.”

“Why not just tell me the coordinates now.”

And Lena actually laughs, then. “I don’t know them.”

“How do you get back?”

“I meet them at certain places, they blindfold me and take me back. Mother really doesn’t trust me.”

And Kara can see then, that that hurts. That even if Lena is telling the truth, and she’s working from the inside to bring her mother down, that her mother’s lack of trust stings. And conundrum of emotion that Kara can’t begin to understand.

“Then why let you?”

“I’m bugged, at all times. I have cameras on me, satellites. I think she…enjoys…using me, like this.”

That leaves a sick feeling in Kara’ stomach. To have your mother do that.

If Lena is telling the truth. What evidence is there that she isn’t?

What evidence is there that she is?

“I could follow you, now. And then follow them back.”

“Kara, no.” Lena’s hand grips her upper arm, and Kara can feel it, the strength in her fingers. The grip. “It’s surrounded by the idiots under the influence of the serum. If you come at night, most won’t be able to fight. The system’s security is completely up right now. Follow the plan.”

“And trust you.”

Kara wants to lean into her, not pull away from the hand. She’s so tired, the days of work and fighting creeping up on her. She wonders, then, if Lena is tired. What it’s been like, where she’s been, if what she says is true. That she’s been fighting from inside. What her mother has done to her.

Lena gives a nod. “Yes. And that. Trust me.”

Kara can’t say the words. They aren’t there, to bring to her tongue. She wants to. To tell her that. Because she’s an idiot, and she’s going to take Lena at her word.

But she can’t say it.

So instead she surges forward, her hands at Lena’s neck, fingers tugging her into Kara, their bodies colliding. There’s nothing like in the office. With Kara watching the way her muscles pull and a level of unsure at her fingertips. Instead, she’s raw, words failing her when normally she spills too many when nerves are attacking her, sentences flowing out in a jumble. Kara’s lips are almost brutal in their kiss, and Lena just responds in kind. Fingers are under her cape, gripping her back and Kara moans, the sound reverberating out of her chest. She’s pushed back against a crate and sits with a thump, her hands never leaving Lena’s neck, her shoulders, fingers grasping and mouths desperate. Lena’s between her legs, arching into her and Kara slips an arm around her waist, pulling her in impossibly tighter.

Kara’s head falls back, and Lena’s lips are on her neck, she bites down hard and there’s no soothing tongue this time, just the brush of her lips again.

Ragged words are gasped into her ear.

“I can’t.”

Kara shakes her head and pulls their mouths back together, her tongue flicking over Lena’s and hands trying to find some way into Lena’s suit. She wants skin, the softness of Lena’s breaths. The wet warmth between her legs. She wants the peace it brings, and she wants it to just be them and the sounds she knows Lena makes.

Then Lena’s pulling back, and Kara chases her mouth, eyes closed and dampness behind her lids she wants to ignore. With a final press of her lips, Lena rests their foreheads together, panting and Kara finally opens her eyes to be dazzled by a tiny rim of green and pupils blown wide.

“Kara. I want this. But I have no time. I have to go.”

Her fingers cling to Lena’s neck, her back. “Stay.”

“You don’t understand.” Lena shakes her head and steps back, leaving Kara sprawled on the crate. Lena’s pale skin is flushed, her hair a mess. She takes more steps backwards. “I have to be there or there are consequences.” She straightens, swallows and Kara sits up, then stands. “You’ll get the message.”

And with that, Lena turns to leave. And Kara’s throat aches with the need to call her back. They had no time. There’s so many questions she wants to ask. Blanks she needs filled.

When Lena’s at the door, instead Kara says, “I could follow you now.”

Because who knows if anything Lena has said is true?

She stops and turns back.

“You could.” Lena tilts her head and she’s looking at Kara, so intent that Kara wants to flinch away from it. Instead she meets it, her jaw set. “But it would be a mistake. So you won’t.”

And, damn her, she’s right.

Kara watches her disappear, out the door, her feet pounding on the stairs with super speed, with no idea if she’s done the right thing or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your ongoing feedback and comments and kudos. You all give me life.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all and your kudos and comments and excited feedback on this whacky story are just great. Thanks so much.

“I don’t agree with this.” Alex is hissing her words out.

Kara, jammed against a sink in one of the toilets in the bowels of the DEO, crosses her arms and tries to look intimidating. “You made that perfectly clear in the meeting.”

“It’s insane, is why!”

Alex is barely a few feet away. Did they have to choose the smallest room in the entire place? Alex had all but frog marched her down here. She was still shaking with anger.

Also, it smells.

And after spending two hours arguing with everyone in the DEO, Kara isn’t up to this. Alex presses her hand over her eyes and sucks in a deep breath.

“Kara.” Ah. That’s why she’s been dragged into the smallest bathroom in the depths of the building. Alex wants to talk to Kara, not Supergirl. Alex drops her hand, those circles around her eyes even darker than that morning. They all need a break, but there’s none in sight. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?”

“The city is tearing itself apart out there, Alex.” There’s a crack in Kara’s voice, and she has no idea if it’s from exhaustion or the pain of watching their city turn on itself. “And beyond that, none of us can keep going like this. We’re all exhausted. Everyone else out there has agreed it’s our only option.”

Alex’s jaw is tight. “And none of the know that your sleeping with Lena Luthor and your judgement is completely clouded!”

There’s a feeling like shattering in Kara’s chest. She crossed her arms over it, but it does nothing to stop the hurt that’s leaking through the gaps. “Alex.”

Her voice breaks again, just slightly, and the tightness in Alex’s jaw lessens, her eyes softening. “Kara…”

“You’re talking to me like I’m an idiot.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I told everyone exactly what happened with Lena. Whether they know about us or not, they all agreed we were going to have to take the risk. Admit it—you’re only against this because you don’t trust her.”

“Why should I trust her?”

“Maybe because I do?” The words bite out before Kara can stop them.

They stare at each other, cheeks flushed, Alex’s hands clenched and Kara trying to stand straight on in the tiny space. Alex swallows and Kara can hear her heart, thumping rage through her body. It starts to slow. Alex cocks her head. “You really trust her?”

Kara doesn’t want to lie. She wavers constantly between yes and no and mostly falling in the grey area in the middle. “I want to.”

“And that’s enough for you?”

“It has to be,” Kara says. Alex is losing that hard outer shell, the one she adopts when she’s in protective mode. Or when she’s clinging to her anger to give her fire. “And I need it to be enough for you, too. I need you with me on this, Alex.”

“Hey.” Alex’s fingers curl around her bicep, and Kara automatically feels that shattered feeling in her chest stitch itself back up, just a little. “I’m always with you. I’m, just…worried.”

“I know.”

Alex furrows her brow. “I don’t think you do. What happens, Kara, if Lena is working for them, and this is all a trap? Can you take that level betrayal?”

The words aren’t there, the tag on of ‘another one?’ after the hard slaps of truth about Kara’s family one after the other. Kara feels the lick of frustration in her fade at the realisation that so much of Alex’s stubbornness is from a place of worrying that Kara was going to be flattened at the end of it.

She can’t even blame her, because Kara isn’t so sure that’s not where it’s going herself.

Kara sets her jaw and raises her chin, just a little. “I’ll just have to. But what if she’s on our side, Alex, and this isn’t all a betrayal?”

There’s a thread of hope in her voice that Kara knows is dangerous. A threat. Something she shouldn’t let creep in. She wants to hide it, that she’s that vulnerable when it comes to this. But Alex smiles, again, and it’s a little sad. As if she’s heard it too and has no idea how to save Kara from herself.

“There’s that, too,” Alex says.

Alex fingers squeeze once, before falling away and she turns to leave. Kara catches her hand and tugs her back into a hug, awkward and uncomfortable in that tiny space but everything Kara needs, right then.

“I love you.” Kara basically breathes the words.

Alex squeezes her, tight enough so Kara can really feel it. “I love you too.”

They leave and go back upstairs, where movement and shouting takes over their afternoon. They have five hours until they can expect the coordinates. Everyone’s preparing. Half the unit is required to stay to manage the protests that continue outside. Alex has already spoken to Maggie, to make sure the human side is being dealt with.

“Supergirl, Agent Danvers.”

Kara and Alex turn as one. J’Onn walks up to them.

“Yes?” Alex’s voice is all business.

Kara can understand that. All she wants right then is a job to sink her fists into, to help pass the time. She wants whatever is coming to be over. And the hours will drag if they have nothing to do. She puts her hands on her hips and next to her, Alex does the same.

“Go home.”

Kara’s shoulders sag, but Alex’s don’t. “Excuse me?”

He narrows his eyes. “Any operative that’s been involved since the beginning and pulling double shifts who’s also needed tonight has been ordered to go back and rest. Everyone’s to report back at 2100 hours.”

“J’Onn—”

“Danvers. No argument or you’re not coming.”

He turns to go, and Kara calls after him, “And what about you?”

He morphs into his green martian form. “I’m an alien. I have different needs.”

Kara huffs, “But—”

“Don’t you dare, Supergirl.” He turns around and crosses his arms. “You haven’t stopped once in days. Go. You will both be more use to us fresh.”

Alex and Kara look at each other, then back to J’Onn. Who just glowers at them.

Kara drops her hands. “Fine.”

She turns and Alex turns with her. Then Alex stops, turning back. “J’Onn.”

He raises his eyebrows. “We are not debating this.”

Alex squares her shoulders and Kara, almost without noticing, turns and does the same. It’s obvious when Alex is gearing up to something. Kara’s seen it so many times, as she gathers her words, and juts her chin. Ready to say what she knows won’t be expected. And Kara naturally stands next to her when she does it.

“We could use all the help on this we could get,” Alex says.

Kara’s eyebrows bunch together and she looks from J’Onn to Alex, no idea what is going on. Obviously they could. They all know that.

“Yes, we could. That’s why I need you all ready to go at 2100.” J’Onn sounds just as confused as Kara feels.

“Then it’s a pity we don’t have another nearly invulnerable alien who can fight for us.”

It takes J’Onn only a second before his face clouds, and Kara is only another second behind him. They’ve all tried to talk to J’Onn about this. But with M’Gann’s own guilt and acceptance of her fate, and J’Onn’s refusal to compromise, no one has gotten very far.

“This is not up for discussion.” His hand slashes through the air and he starts to turn.

“I think it is.” Alex’s voice is like a whip and Kara steps right up beside her now, her arms crossed and their shoulder’s brushing. He stops and turns back, his own arms across his chest.

“Agent Danvers is right.” Kara’s voice holds the timbre she reaches for as Supergirl. “J’Onn,” and then she loses it, “I know this isn’t cut and dry. That it’s more complicated than we can hope to imagine.” His face is like stone and Kara drops her arms. This isn’t a time to be combative. “But we can’t keep her here purely because she’s a white martian. Let her atone. She can help us.”

His nostrils flare and his gaze goes from Kara to Alex, and then he pivots and leaves, his shoulders straight back. He doesn’t turn around again.

Kara and Alex glance at each other, then watch him disappear.

 

* * *

 

Kara didn’t think she’d sleep. It had seemed impossible when she’d lied down in Alex’s spare room. But when her phone starts beeping just before eight, her eyes drag open.

Now that she has slept, she just wants to fall back into it. There’s the wisp of a dream dragging along the edges of her memory.

Lena, the first time they’d kissed, the city lights exploding behind them, only Kara had known, the entire time, there’d been a secret on Lena’s tongue, and nothing she could do would make her spill it. Instead of flying away when Lena had gasped her name, Kara had buried her face in Lena’s neck, dropped to her knees—

Kara sits up, her entire body protesting. She needs to focus. Too much hinges on tonight.

But her head feels cloudy, stuffed.

Food.

Plus a shower. She’ll feel better with those two things.

Kara stumbles out of the bed, her feet almost tangling in the sheet. Rubbing her eyes, she makes it into the living room and blinks around. The room is shrouded in darkness, shadows dancing over the walls. The TV they’d left on is droning, a sitcom neither of them like on the screen, the canned laughter irritating and fake.

Maybe she should make something to eat.

Or, maybe she should wake up Alex and make Alex cook something to eat.

That sounds like a great idea.

Fist rubbing at her eye again, she opens Alex’s door with the other.

And stops dead.

Because Alex’s head is between Maggie’s legs, and one of Maggie’s heels is digging into Alex’s back, a hand in her hair and neither have noticed Kara and Kara really never, ever needed to see her sister doing that.

“Rao!”

She slaps her hand over her eyes, but not before Maggie shoots into a sitting position and Alex is spinning around. So many breasts she should never have seen.

“Kara!”

And Kara turns, pulling the door shut after her. She stands in the living room, her hand still over her eyes and tries to ignore the heat spreading over her cheeks. Can she clean out her brain? Is that something she can do? An option? Bleach could do it.

Maybe she should leave.

Wait, she can’t leave, Alex and she need to go to the DEO in less than an hour. But she could still leave and meet her there, and then pretend this never, ever happened. That’s a good idea. Letting her hand fall, Kara looks around for her bag but before she can find it and flee, Alex’s door clicks open.

Kara turns to her, already sheepish, and Alex is so red she basically glows. Alex finds a light switch and flicks it on, glaring daggers at Kara, with a hastily-thrown on pair of track pants and a sweat shirt that’s inside out. And back to front.

“I am so, so sorry Alex.”

Maggie is behind her, dressed a bit better than Alex, and gives a slight wave, then starts tugging her hair up into a ponytail. “Kara. Hi.”

She doesn’t even seem that embarrassed.

“You had no indication that maybe you shouldn’t have come in? Really?” Alex is staring at her pointedly.

“No.” Kara shakes her head rapidly.

“You couldn’t hear anything that indicated maybe you shouldn’t come in?”

Maggie is looking from one to the other, bemused.

“The TV was on, and you know I don’t hone—uh, listen carefully…”

And it’s true. Kara has to hone into things to hear them, something that too her years and years to learn. Or she’d go mad with how much she could hear. She’d thought Alex was alone. She’d been that way when they’d gone to sleep. Which is what they were supposed to be doing. Not that Kara can talk, she’s been kissing people at completely inappropriate times recently. Well, person. One. Lena. Just the thought of her sends a wave a nausea through her stomach.

And she’d almost used a very strange verb to explain that in front of Maggie.

Who raises her eyebrows. “That’s how it works? You can’t just hear everything, all the time, with that super hearing of yours?”

Kara gapes at her. Alex spins around. Maggie stares at them like they’re complete fools.

“Uh,” Kara snaps her mouth shut. “Super—super hearing?” She laughs, and Alex joins in, the sound so fake it’s cringe worthy. “Why would you think I have that?”

Maggie’s eyebrows are still raised. “Because you’re Supergirl?” And she walks past them both and into the kitchen. “Who’s hungry? I’m starving.”

Alex has turned back around and is staring at Kara with wide eyes. Kara probably looks the same. Then Alex somehow goes redder and she looks away again. They follow Maggie to the kitchen and stand opposite her at the counter.

“Maggie?” Alex hesitates, then asks, “How did you know that?”

Maggie has a packed of pasta in hand and gives Alex a look that borders on insulted. “I’m a detective, Sanders. I—”

“Detect, I know.”

They share a cute look that Kara doesn’t understand at all.

Kara looks from one to the other. “Uh—but how?” she asks.

Maggie pays them no mind as she fills a pot with water and starts it boiling. “You’re a terrible liar, Kara.” She flashes Kara a grin, and she really is beautiful. Alex almost melts just at the sight of it and Kara wants to roll her eyes at her. “No offence.”

“I’m a great liar.”

Alex and Maggie snort as one, which is weirdly couplish.

“You disappear when Supergirl is needed. But, like, every time. And give the worst excuses. Once you told me you had to go to the gym. At ten at night. You and Supergirl both gave me the same glare once, when I was getting my act together.” Maggie pours the pasta in and gives it a stir. “And, well, the glasses help, sure. But you’re Supergirl.” She turns around. “You two are genuinely surprised I figured this out?”

“Well…” Alex shrugs. “Yeah.”

“I’ve figured it for weeks.”

“Oh.” Kara clears her throat. “So you’re not gonna…”

“Tell anyone?” Maggie starts pulling out cheese from the fridge, plus a half-empty jar of sauce. “Nope.” She opens the jar and takes a sniff, nodding to herself. When she looks up, she rolls her eyes. “Haven’t told anyone so far. Never will.”

“Okay.” Alex says, and Kara’s just glad that the attention is off of what she walked in on just before. Though now just thinking that bought the memory back. “We may need to get you to sign some stuff at the DEO.”

Maggie waved a hand, a wooden spoon waggling. “Sure. Anyway, once I’ve coked this I’ve got to get back. I was just given a few hours to sleep.”

“That was not sleeping,” Kara blurts out.

Red instantly creeps into Alex’s cheeks again and Maggie laughs.

“Well, excuse us. We haven’t seen each other much.”

Kara wonders if Alex will ever look her in the eye again.

Though it’s nice, on some weird level, to know that Alex got past her concerns.

They wolf down their pasta and then head to the DEO. Both decide to ride, Kara borrowing Alex’s spare motorbike. It’s always comforting, to zoom between cars and pick up speed in a way that feels connected to everything around her. Flying is something else, an addiction she needs like air. But this? The power between her legs and taking turns so sharply her knee could almost graze the ground? It makes her feel apart of the Earth, of the pavement and cement and dirt beneath her.

Of the people.

And she needs that tonight. Alex is ahead. Kara could speed up. Her reflexes allow for her to do a lot on a bike humans can’t. She could pick up speed and calculate fast tracks to overtake Alex and pull up first.

But it’s nice, to follow her lead. To watch her sister handle herself smoothly and know that if Kara just goes where she goes, they’ll end up where they need to end up.

Because tonight won’t be like that.

Kara pulls in a second after Alex, both swinging their legs over and pulling their helmets on. Alex’s eyes are lit up like they always are after a ride, the stars in her eyes. They’ve parked just away from the DEO and Kara looks around them. There are only trees and the shadows.

“Clear?” Alex asks.

Kara gives a nod.

“Good.” Alex hesitates before leaving to go inside. “Kara?”

“Yeah?” Kara’s fingers are already plucking at her bike jacket, ready to get into her suit. Alex is looking at her, sincerity brimming in her eyes.

“I hope you’re right.”

Kara swallows, and offers her a tight smile. “Thanks.”

And Alex starts walking towards the building. Kara pulls off her shirt and within seconds is in her suit, clothes stashed in a bag, and she flies up and towards the operations room. She flies lands next to J’Onn, standing where he always is, and she hands Winn her phone.

“Supergirl. Did you sleep?”

She nods. “Enough.”

It’s so tempting then, to tell on Alex. Just for fun. She doesn’t, of course.

Alex joins them in minutes.

“Agent Danvers. Your team is waiting for you.”

“Good.” She looks to Winn, spinning himself back and forwards in his chair with his foot. “Ready to trace Supergirl’s phone when the text arrives?”

Something Winn had suggested. A way to figure out where the text has come from.

“Yup.” He waggles the device. “Connected to the computer and good to go.”

“Then all we have to do is wait,” Alex says. “I’ll see you there.”

With a last look at Kara and J’Onn, she leaves to prep her team, and make sure everyone who’s going is armed, set and knows the plan, then are seated in vehicles ready to go by ten.

Kara sits in a chair next to Winn. She has nothing to do to prep. She’s ready. She feels she may burst at the seams, stitches flying, with how much she needs to get this over with. To hopefully end Cadmus. To end Lillian.

To know, finally, what side Lena is on.

Because she feels, in her gut, that the Lena she knows, the one who Kara kisses when she should be worrying about the world falling apart, the one who says her name in a way that makes Kara fall to pieces, the one who smiles at her like Kara herself is the sun—she feels that that Lena is completely on her side.

She just hopes that that Lena is the real Lena.

Which she has to be.

“Lena Luthor said most of the Super Cads wouldn’t be able to fight tonight, didn’t she?” J’Onn asks.

Kara nods. “Yes. Since the serum they’re using on her no longer needs daylight, it sounds like some others may have had that one.”

“And she seems sure they weren’t going to have anything permanent until tomorrow?”

They’ve been over this. Again and again. “That’s what she said. It’s one of the reasons it has to be tonight.”

“But there could be some with the serum that’s working at night flying around tonight?”

“It sounded like there would be.”

J’Onn’s face is like stone and he nods, walking away to speak with someone.

Sometimes, Kara just likes to be near him. There’s something in the shared feeling of been one of less than a handful of survivors of not just your city, but your entire planet. Something Kara can’t feel with many other people. Mon-El—but he doesn’t seem as effected. Or maybe he is, and Kara just isn’t aware. Kal, but even he doesn’t get it entirely—he doesn’t have the memories that sway through his dreams and writhe around reality. He doesn’t wake up with vocals on his tongue, the sound of a language all but dead trying to spill over but failing. He doesn’t remember the stretches of city, the crystals that scraped the sky. He doesn’t remember his mother’s voice, and the touch of his father’s hand cupping the back of his head. The sound of their laughter. The discussions of science and philosophy.

Sometimes, Kara isn’t sure if it’s better or worse for him, that he doesn’t remember it.

But J’Onn feels it. He carries it with him constantly. She can see it in his eye, in the flinch he always tries to cover up.

Being around him can be like a balm, some days. An unspoken understanding.

Winn wheels over like a crab, making her smile, and nudges her knee with his own. “You okay?”

Kara gives a sharp nod. “Fine.”

He gives her that look he’s so good at, like he can see right through her a little bit. “You sure?”

And she nods again, getting up. “I’m great, Winn. Just want to get started.”

Half truths.

But it’s not going to be that easy. At ten on the dot they’re all ready to go at a moments notice. Kara and J’Onn will fly immediately and assess the situation from the sky, and wait to make a move for the operatives to arrive—if they can arrive fast enough for the thirty minute window. If not, they’ll go in and try to bring down the security system from within.

There is no sign of M’Gann, and Kara doesn’t say anything. When this is over, though, she’s going to make J’Onn talk to her.

“Nothing?” she asks Winn.

He shakes his head. “Radio silence.”

At 2215 Alex’s voice appears over coms. “Anything?”

“Nothing.”

At 2230, Kara is pacing, the heel of her red boots echoing out over the room of nervous people needing to do something.

“There’s still thirty minutes,” she says.

Though she’s not sure who she’s saying it to.

Then it’s 2252. And Kara’s starting to worry that maybe it was a trap. But one that has them stuck waiting, when something is going down outside.

Then her phone vibrates, and every person in the room turns to stare down at it. Winn swallows and taps the screen.

“Coordinates.” He taps a button on his computer and the coordinates are launched onto the big hanging screens, a dot bleeping.

J’Onn steps forward, his entire body thrumming with energy. “Is that—”

“I think so.” Winn leans back in his chair. “Oh, boy.”

Kara is standing with her hands on her hips. “Is it what?”

She sees absolutely nothing of relevance. All she wants to do is fly there. The time is ticking.

“That’s the old DEO base.” J’Onn is frowning at the screen.

“What?” It doesn’t look like the old base to Kara. “The other was more west.”

“No, not the last one.” J’Onn morphs, red glowing like cracks through his skin. Kara loves watching it, like a sun emerging. “The original. It’s essentially a military bunker.”

“One that the government sector in charge of apparently decommissioned and caved in when everything moved. Also, the message is too well encrypted. No way to confirm.”

Kara needed to ask Winn when he’d learned all this about the DEO. The facts are slowly sinking in her brain. “But if they’re there, it’s not decommissioned. And it’s definitely not caved in.”

J’Onn is already turning to leave and Kara turns with him.

“Tell her to join us and send the coordinates to the others,” J’Onn throws over his shoulder.

“Aye Aye.” Winn’s voice is strained.

They stand at the window, their capes fluttering.

“Did you call Superman?” J’Onn asks.

“He’s stuck keeping the peace in Metropolis—this isn’t just in National City.” Below, Kara can hear the cars and vans and trucks pulling out. “We could have used him tonight, though.”

Having her cousin there would have helped settle the anxiety washing through her.

“It’s okay.” J’Onn’s voice is low. “We have a third.”

And then M’Gann is next to them, in her martian form. Green, not white. And she turns and looks at the both. “Let’s do this.”

J’Onn came through, and something like pride swells in Kara’s throat as she grins and takes off, the other two following immediately. She lets J’Onn pull ahead and she can tell he’s going as fast as he can. It’s just not fast enough for Kara. She’s itching to go faster. To pick up speed, to leave a clap of sound behind as she leaves them in her wake and gets there as soon as she can. But J’Onn knows exactly where they’re going. And she needs the numbers, more people behind her.

They need to do this right.

And then J’Onn is pulling up and Kara flies next to him, M’Gann on her other side, and they’re looking down through some cloud.

“There’s nothing,” M’Gann says.

Kara squints. “Not nothing. There are buildings, all in black out. And—” she quints again— “I can’t see through the ground. J’Onn?”

“It’s lined with lead.” He’s staring down, as if willing himself to be able to see more. “The entrance is right below us.”

“If Lena was telling the truth, we should be able to just go straight in.” Kara wants to go now.

“If the team arrives in time.” J’Onn is holding back.

“How long will it take them?” she asks.

Here, the sky is dark, the stars stretching out overhead.

“Another fifteen minutes.”

“It took us ten.” Kara looks at him. “That’s cutting it too fine. We could lose our window to get in.”

“We need to wait.”

“But if we go in, we can make sure it’s infiltrated and that the security system stays off.”

“Patience, Supergirl.”

Kara clenches her jaw and casts her eyes back to the ground. “There’s movement, flying low.”

“Super Cads?”

“I think so.” Her head moves as she counts. “Three of them.”

“Nothing we can’t handle.” J’Onn looks at his watch. “Though, there could be more inside.”

“Can I ask something?” Both Kara and J’Onn look to M’Gann, who seems to take that as an indication that she can. “Why aren’t there more of them? Haven’t there been uncountable amounts running rampant?”

“Lena said things go wrong if they’re injected to often. Most are probably holding off until tomorrow, for the serum that will apparently be permanent.

M’Gann nods. The hesitates. “I have to say, I’m with Supergirl. We should clear our entrance now, so the operatives can actually get in when they arrive.”

Kara smiles. “I knew I liked you. J’Onn,” Kara turns to him, “let’s do it.”

He takes in a deep breath. “Fine.”

And then Kara’s smile falls and she drops her gaze back down. “One each at seven o’clock, one o’clock and four o’clock. I’ve got seven.”

And she drops like a bullet. The sound of whistling wind behind her lets her know that M’Gann and J’onn have followed her. Every time she slams into one of these people, satisfaction coats her insides, oily. She isn’t proud of that, of enjoying the way she hits the man and is using her momentum to drag down into the sand, an explosion of it raining around them at their collision. But damn, it feels good.

He has something of hers. Some part of her essence, stolen, pushed into a tube and pumping around his body.

And he’s using it to kill those like her, indiscriminately. He’s wreaking havoc with it.

The reminder of that sends her temperature spiking, her fists curling as she pulls back her arm and slams it into his face. His head flies back into the sand and she kicks out at him, his body careening along the ground, a gouge mark left in his wake.

Kara likes the way the desert smells. She always has. There’s something in the heat of it, in the warmth that soaks it all that reminds her of Krypton.

He stands, sneering, raises a hand to his ear. His sneer deepens.

His coms are out.

So far, Lena hasn’t lied.

Kara cocks her head. “No one’s home.”

He flies at her and she pushes up, back into the sky and loops to come back down on him from above. They collide midair and it’s with anger in her fingers she manages to grasp his shirt and throw him back to the ground.

They have to avoid buildings. Shattering. Anything that can alert those inside, who should be running around trying to fix their blackout, thinking themselves protected with the three Super Cads outside.

And it’s interesting. It’s so quick. Their powers drain fast, whether that’s compounded by night time, even if their powers work out of the sun, or not, Kara has no idea. Within five minutes, the three Super Cads stand back to back and Kara, J’Onn and M’Gann prowl around them in a circle.

“You all drained fast.” Kara says. “It normally takes more than that.”

“It’s been half a day since we took it,” one bites out. He glares at her, the wrinkles in his brow deep, the moonlight making his face shadowy

“Shut up.” One of the women hiss at him. She looks at Kara, her eyes bright even as she pales, her skin clammy. “How did you find us?”

“Not telling,” J’Onn answers.

“What do we do with them?” M’Gann asks.

J’Onn zips into one of the buildings and emerges with chain. He throws it to Kara who grins.

It’s the work of a moment to tie them up, and break links and reshape them together to have them stuck to something they’ll never get out of.

“The other’s are minutes away,” J’Onn says.

“Good. We’ll be inside waiting for them.”

Kara twirls, her cape fluttering, and starts walking through the sand towards the place J’Onn said the entrance was. And it’s there, a large, angled metal bunker door. She pauses outside of it, staring at it.

“Ready?” she asks, not turning around.

“Give them the time to arrive, Supergirl.” J’Onns voice is soothing, low.

Like he knows she’s aching to get inside. To tear this place apart. She wants Lena safe. She wants everything about Cadmus gone. She wants this serum used to cause mayhem, created from her blood, obliterated.

“More like one.” Comes over Kara’s coms and all three turn to see the trucks pulling up, operatives piling out and falling into rank in a swarm behind them. Alex walks up, rifle in hand, gun holster on her thigh, lit up by the headlights behind her.

Alex hooks her thumb over her shoulder. “Saw the three tied up. They’re being dragged into custody as we speak. About to get the party started without me?”

She’s looking at Kara like she knows, like she expected nothing less. Her gaze drops to Kara’s clenched fists and then to J’Onn and Alex nods. Raises her gun, ready.

“Let’s get it started, then.”

Kara turns and pulls open the door. There’s no resistance.

One man turns, surprised, his arm raising and Kara punches him in the face. He drops like a sack of bricks, and she steps over him, leading them way down the dark stairs.

It’s a maze. A mess of tunnels and catwalks and metal and cement. Kara can’t see through the walls. She storms through passageways, her heels ringing, and hears Alex whispering directives, sending groups of five down different corridors, everyone’s coms on to spread news and alerts. Anyone they meet they disable and Kara is itching for something more.  
So far it’s been all supply rooms filled with crates. Nothing. Barely anyone.

And then she pulls open a door and steps into a lab.

Just as the lights flicker on, their window over.

The room is full of groaning bodies. Most strapped down on gurneys, some not. Aliens and humans. They’re deformed, torn to pieces. Sliced open. People in lab coats, torches in their hands, look up, blinking in surprise. Their mouths form perfect ‘o’s’ of shock.

Kara sees red. What have they been doing in here?

But the lab coats are weak humans, and she has to reign herself in, hold back. She can't let loose on them like she itches to. But then one manages to send off a warning, his palm hitting a button, and doors slam open, Super Cads racing through them followed by guards, and Kara gets to fight. Her fists fly, and she’s only vaguely aware of Alex and the DEO operatives facing the human guards who have run in, guns raised. She throws a Super Cad through a column and runs after him, launching herself on his laughing face. Someone kicks her from behind and it actually hurts, though before she can respond, J’Onn is dragging the woman away.

They all fade quickly, their powers draining faster than the ones outside, and one turns and flees.

Kara looks after him then turns around and makes eye contact with Alex, who’s restraining a human. Alex holds her eye.

“Supergirl! Wait.”

But Kara turns and runs after him. He’s still fast, even if he’s losing charge. His feet pound, a continuous blur of speed and sound, and Kara tears after him, down a passageway, through a room that looks like it’s full of cells, bars lining the room, and then they burst into a room that looks uncomfortably like the DEO head of operations room, screens mounted along walls and desks filled with computers.

And in the middle, Lillian Luthor, holding Lena against her front, a gun held to her daughters head.

Lena is looking straight at her, jaw tight, a muscle clenching in her cheek, the green of her eyes like stone.

The muzzle of the gun is digging straight into her temple.

“Supergirl.” Lillian smiles, and there’s nothing friendly about it. “Welcome.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How did this fic become this from like a 1000 word one shot?? Anyway, I am so so sorry this update took so long. Life ran away with me for awhile. But I'm baaaaack. And super psyched. Thank you, seriously, for all the comments and kudos and messages. You have no idea how inspiring they all are. I hope you all like this one!
> 
> One note: some people seem to think Lena has permanent powers: She doesn't! She was sure they'd have that serum ready the next day, though, which was why the raid had to be tonight. She did have, however, the serum that lasted longer/didn't need direct sunlight. Hope that clears things up.

Kara doesn’t move. She doesn’t breathe.

Instead, she stands, sounds drifting in from behind her, the sounds of violence, of shouting. She took too many turns as she ran through the place, twists and corners. What was she thinking? She wasn’t, which was always her issue. Impulsive. Kara always has been. Alex won’t find her. The coms in Kara’s ear are silent.

They’d been crackling as she’d run through the corridors.

And now it’s dead.

But it’s what’s in front of her makes her blood run cold.

Lillian at the opposite end of the huge room, steely eyes trained on Kara and her steely gun on her daughter’s temple, her daughter’s body tight in front of hers, only Lillian’s face and arm in her sights. It’s a stare off, Kara with her cape still settling after her rapid movement, the door wide open behind her.

It’s barely comprehensible, though.

A gun. Her daughter. Freeze breath would hit Lena, too. Her vision takes that second to heat up, enough to make Lillian pull the trigger? Just the shock of it on Lillian’s arm could make the gun go off.

Kara’s fingers itch to rip it from her hands. Her super speed could manage it. Or could it?

It couldn’t—reflexes could send that gun of in a split second. But surely Lillian doesn’t mean it. She would never go that far.

Would she?

The searing image of the bodies, experimented on to the point of horror flashes in Kara’s brain. So many of them, littering that room as if they weren’t wasted life, destroyed people.

So, maybe Lillian would.

Kara juts her chin and puts her hands on her hips. With everything she has, she tries not to show how close she is to trembling. Just the image of Lena like this has left Kara feeling like she’s missed a step while walking downstairs.

She pushes that fragile idea aside, and as her shoulders push back, she leaves Kara behind and lets that shield take her place, the ‘S’ on her chest everything she needs it to be.

Lena’s face is impassive, completely unreadable except the tightness of her jaw, and Kara has no idea what that means. Her mother is using her as a shield, yet Kara can’t see a single emotion on her face.

Of course, she can’t look Lena in the eye.

Options run through her brain: this has been a trap the entire time, Lillian and Lena planned this.

Or Lillian knows Lena helped them get in, but Lena doesn’t know Lillian knows.

Or Lillian doesn’t know and is using Lena against Kara, because she knows they’re _something_ to each other.

That thought sends caution prickling along Kara’s spine.

Maybe Lillian doesn’t know what Lena’s done.

“You’d shoot your own daughter?” Kara asks.

“Yes.”

Lillian’s voice is painfully cold, but that doesn’t hit Kara like the way Lena closing her eyes for a split second does, the way her throat bobs as she swallows, before she’s looking at Kara again, her jaw clenched even tighter.

Yet Kara still can’t meet her eye. Something may snap within her if she does.

She so wants Lena to be on her side. And she feels it here, that thought blossoming in her chest: Lena _is_ on their side. She _has_ to be.

And Lena has a gun far too close to her brain.

“You wouldn’t.” Kara wishes she was as sure of that fact as her tone makes her sound.

“I assure you I would. I’d prove it to you, but then where would my leverage be?” Lillian’s eyes are almost sparking, as if this is all a rush to her. A game. Something to fill the time. Kara needs to not look at Lena. To not catch that piercing green that’s trained on her, because if she does, she may do something stupid.

Something is uncurling in her stomach. Something fierce, and strong. Something Kara has only ever felt so strongly for Alex: protectiveness.

“Lena has powers. It won’t hurt her.” Kara’s grasping at straws, she can feel it.

Lillian presses the barrel of the gun harder against Lena’s temple, and Kara wants to tear it from her hand; to close this too-big gap and snap Lillian’s hand back, hear a crack of bone, gratifying. To break that gun so it can’t ever jam against Lena’s skin like that again. That spot is sensitive, Kara knows. Her lips trailed over it, once, and Lena had shuddered against her and Kara had almost smiled.

That’s not a place for a gun.

“Supergirl.” Lillian presses it even tighter again and Lena actually flinches, finally, some hint of something. “Her dose wore off. She wasn’t to have any more until tomorrow.” There’s a smile on her face then, grim, almost. Satisfied, too. It’s haunting. And Kara thinks that image will stay with her for a long time. A smiling Lillian and pale Lena, a gleaming gun. A mother using her child as a shield. “They can’t have too much, you see. Or unfortunate things happen.”

The way she says unfortunate doesn’t sound as if she finds them so. Kara’s stomach roils. Had she seen the result of that in that horrible room?

Kara’s own blood caused all that.

She can hear their hearts, from here. Can hear Lillian’s: steady and slow, not concerned. But Lena’s is racing. Too fast, even for fear, a staccato, a rhythm that could leave her dizzy. It had been like that last time Kara saw her.

But what if Lillian is lying?

Apparently, Lillian reads her thoughts because she says, “Don’t believe me?”

And she pulls her arm up, before Kara can comprehend, and slams it down, the red of Lena’s blood spilling almost instantly from a gash above her eyebrow. Lena cries out, Lillian pulling her back tight against her front instantly, and Kara’s hands clench, her fists falling from her hips as she steps forward, that gun already against Lena’s brow again.

“Uh, uh, uh,” Lillian tsks. “Any closer and it’s done.”

Kara freezes and that red drips down past Lena’s eye, which Kara still avoids. Lena’s heart continues to thrum away. Too fast. Far too fast. Is she so panicked?

She has no idea what to do. Or what Lillian expects.

“Now.” Lillian stares straight at her. “Tell me how you got in.”

So Lillian doesn’t know. Unless this is all a ruse.

Kara’s head is spinning, trying to puzzle it all out. There’s no black and white for her to fall into, to believe. It’s been weeks and weeks of this, of being unsure and not knowing whose side everyone is on, her footsteps falling and never knowing where they’ll land.

Kara just wants to know the truth.

So she starts. With a lie. “I tracked one of the returning Super Cads here earlier.”

“Impossible.” Unfortunately, Lillian isn’t stupid. “This power outage wasn’t a coincidence. Twice in one day?”

Maybe she does know the truth, and she wants Kara to confirm it.

The distant sounds of running echoes from behind them, and Lillian straightens her shoulders.

“Close the door, Supergirl. And seal it.”

Kara hesitates, and that barrel is pressed harder into Lena’s head.

“Now.”

It’s so tempting, to challenge it. Because, surely, Lillian wouldn’t really shoot Lena. Wouldn’t kill her daughter in cold blood. Or at all.

But who knows what this woman is capable of?

Clenching her jaw, Kara turns and seals them away, quickly, before she can see Alex emerge around a corner and see her, because Kara may let Supergirl fall away if she sees her sister right then. She spins the hatch lock, a hissing sound erupting, and turns back around.

“Good girl.”

Kara really, really wants to punch her.

“Now, where were we?” Lillian’s eyes never leave her, not once. “Ah, yes. Not a coincidence, is it?”

Kara doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing.

“No words, Supergirl? But you’re usually so chatty. Fine. Let me hazard a guess. During today’s blackout, Lena managed to talk to you—” Lena gasps, and Kara can only presumed Lillian is pressing harder. The sound makes Kara take a tiny step forward. “—and tell you there would be another tonight. I’m assuming you know things about our plans. How much, I can’t be sure. But I fear—” her words are calculating, slow “—I was betrayed by my own daughter.”

“Mothers don’t hold guns to their daughters’ heads.”

“This one does,” Lillian answers, smooth and prepared and in her element.

Kara’s nails are biting into her palm and she wishes, for once, that she could feel it. A distraction from the anger bounding in her veins.

“Especially this one,” Lillian continues. “I was, after all, completely let down. Though,” Lillian leans her lips right to Lena’s ear, her eyes on Kara’s. “I can’t be surprised. _Sleeping_ with the enemy? One attempt to destroy the serum already—we were wondering why our progress slowed, in the beginning. The answer became obvious. Though I was expecting it, I thought we had you on quite the leash, Lena.”

Lena speaks, for the first time, her voice hoarse, and Kara wants to pull the sound inside herself. “You thought wrong.”

The mirthless laugh Lillian gives echoes around the room. “I thought twice was enough.”

“Twice what?” Kara asks.

Lena says nothing, so Lillian speaks. Her lips even closer to Lena’s ears. “Two warnings.”

“Warnings don’t involve blowing up a hospital or a school. That’s consequence.” Lena’s voice is still so raw, stripped of something.

Bomb in a hospital? The one they assumed were protesters the night Lena had left with Lillian?

That was Lillian?

“You told Lena you’d blow up something if she didn’t join you. Somewhere with civilians.” Kara is getting it, finally. “And when she didn’t believe you, you did it.”

Lena’s eyes, hollow, as she sat on the couch. _“She means it, Supergirl.”_ And Lillian _had_ meant it.

Twice.

Those deaths, those injuries, caused to keep Lena in line. Kara catches Lena’s eye finally, green piercing her chest, the colour one for poetry and lines about Spring, new starts, an emerald sea. Instead, Kara just sees a gaze sliced with pain, and Lena blinks at her, Kara’s stomach rolling over.

“Why?” Kara asks, her focus back on Lillian. She’ll lose herself in Lena if she isn’t careful.

“She had something I wanted. And it turns out she was quite the asset—though I didn’t know it when I took her. But she’s been quite useful in manipulating you, Supergirl. Keeping you out of our hair.”

Kara hates that Lillian knows whatever she knows about them. And, she wonders, just how much did Lena hate her mother knowing something so vulnerable she was so willing to exploit?

“What did you want?” Kara asks.

Lillian considers her. “Something valuable. Something, though, she disappointed me with. Of course. I don’t know why I expected more of her. We had to get it ourselves from the company.”

“What?”

“You think this is a Disney film in which I stand and profess everything?” Lena smiles, and it does nothing to soften her face.

“I think you’re telling me something for a reason.” Kara wants to step forward more, but any slight movement results in Lillian shifting her arm, that finger heavy on the trigger.

“You’re not as stupid as you act.”

Kara would really, really like to hit her.

“Supergirl,” Kara hates how that sounds coming from Lillian’s lips. Like she’s a child. Like she’s small. “I’m curious about something. How human do you feel? I’ve always wondered.”

That question makes Kara pull back, the strangeness of it. But Lillian is staring at her, curiosity at the edges of her gaze.

Here is probably when she should say she _is_ human. She’s walked among them years. But instead, what comes out is, “I’m not human. I’m Kryptonian.”

There’s something almost like a sneer on Lillian’s face. Almost. “Therein lies the problem. You all come here, but you don’t _really_ want to be here, none of you are one of us. There are those that believed some of you were human enough to remain, to join.” She juts her chin. “I knew different.”

Some think Kara is human enough?

They have no idea, the way Kara spends every day, moving in a world that never feels comfortable under her feet. The way her heart longs for music no sound on Earth can come close to, tastes that rise on her tongue at the strangest times, but ones that will never burst over her tastebuds again. A language that still rolls out of her mouth like it had been born there, nestled deep in her muscles, multiplying in her marrow.

Kara is Kryptonian, not human, and she never will be.

She isn’t sure how she should feel that Lillian sees that when so many others don’t.

How she sees that as a reason they should all be murdered.

“You’re insane,” Kara says.

“Not at all.”

“Well then, why leave me alive when I was vulnerable if you knew I’d not be use to you?”

“I’m a realist. If nothing else, we may have needed more blood. There was no way we could have held you here, not without jeopardising everything, so I let you go. With the convenient knowledge that I had the perfect way to manipulate you to get more when needed.” She cocked her head. “Though that was just an unexpected bonus.”

“What do you want?”

“Two things. The first, I need another vial of your blood. I don’t think I’ll be getting what we had before I leave. Second, I need you to get me out of here. Alive. I’ll be taking Lena, as insurance.”

“No. You’ll leave Lena.”

Lillian smiles again, hard and cruel and not what should really be called a smile. “No. I won’t. I need something to guarantee my escape. That I’m not followed.”

“I give you my word I won’t, if you leave Lena.”

Lillian laughs, the sound bouncing around the room. “Your word?” She asks it like Kara is cute for saying it. “Your naivety is showing, once more.”

Kara clenches her jaw, her teeth grinding together. “You underestimate me.”

“I don’t think I do.”

There’s silence again, sounds not penetrating through the wall and Kara not wanting to hone in. She needed to be here, to be present. To not miss every slight movement, the tick in Lena’s jaw, the steadiness of her gaze. Every twitch of Lillian’s hand, the way it hasn’t faltered, her finger on that trigger, the safety off.

One twitch. That’s all it would take.

And Lena’s eyes, constantly on her.

“There’s no way out.” Kara just keeps grabbing at straws.

“You’ll think of something.”

Kara doesn’t want to. The idea of watching Lillian leave with Lena makes her stomach roll over.

“I can’t get you out without my powers.”

“Again, you’ll think of something.”

Once again, Kara isn’t seeing a way out. Blow her powers. Contact Alex through her coms, if they still work? Tell everyone to clear out?

Both of them are staring at her and Kara’s gone back to avoiding Lena’s eyes. It’s easier.

“My coms aren’t working.”

“There’s a signal interrupter working in here. You can turn it off once you’re powerless. I’ll tell you how.”

Kara’s heart has sped up, beating away in her chest as that prickling sensation runs up and down her nerve endings, rubbing them raw. There’s no way out of this. She isn’t good at these moments, plotting and planning. That’s for Alex, for the DEO, for anyone and everyone else. She has no idea what to do except follow through and hope something works out.

Something is fluttering.

Kara’s eyes dart to Lena’s face. She’s blinking at Kara rapidly and once they lock eyes, Lena widens her own.

Kara looks back to Lillian. Lena wants to tell her something. But Lillian is watching her so intently. So Kara looks everywhere, around the room, eyes darting all over the place. “Where is the interrupter?”

“Uh ah.” Lillian’s voice is that of a mother, telling off a child, and Kara looks back to her, then to Lena, who pointedly flicks her gaze down. Kara looks back to Lillian. “Powers first.”

Kara swallows, and looks around again, gaze going back to Lena who pointedly looks down once more, her entire body still, just her eyes shouting a message, and back around until Kara sees the helmet, tucked away on a table.

“Do you just carry that with you at all times?” Kara asks.

She looks to Lena’s hands, one splayed out by her leg, the other grasping something, her hand rolling to show Kara what it is, tucked against the thigh her mother isn’t next to. A syringe. A glowing red.

The serum?

Lillian hasn’t noticed. “It’s been quite useful to keep those in line who try to get arrogant about their powers.”

She jostles and Lena sucks in a breath as that barrel is pushed hard into her temple again. Kara looks at her and her eyes are wide, staring at Kara. She flicks her gaze down again.

Kara looks to the helmet, to Lillian, then looks back down. That splayed out hand curls into a fist once, then back to holding out five fingers. Ten. Ten what? Minutes? Ten minutes for the serum to work. That’s too long.

She looks back to Lillian. “Fine.”

Because what else can she say?

Kara takes a slow step, and Lillian tracks every moment of it. When Kara looks at Lena, she’s staring at Kara as if begging her to get it. Kara walks, as slow as she can, Lillian turning as slowly on the spot, Lena always held between Lillian and Kara. And Lena uses the movement. In split seconds of glancing, Kara watches Lena flick the cap off the syringe and bury it into her thigh, thumb pushing down just as Kara picks up the helmet off a gleaming metal table.

It really is eerie, how much everything looks like the old DEO old base.

Was that why she needed Kara in on it? To distract Lillian while she did it?

Lena’s body goes slightly rigid, and Lillian doesn’t take her eyes off Kara, still adjusting her footing after staying face on with Kara, her eyes glued to every movement Kara makes.

“Stop moving, Lena.”

Before Lillian can pay real attention to Lena, Kara asks, hands spread over each side of the helmet, “You’ll have to start from scratch with my blood. That sucks for you.”

She pulls the helmet against her stomach, and cocks her head. Lena’s flushed, her skin red, her jaw so tight Kara wonders how much energy it’s taking to hold back her reaction to whatever the serum is doing.

“That isn’t really your concern now, is it?”

Kara shrugs. “I do know it took a while to sort this out.”

Lena is still rigid and Kara thinks she could be sick, with the effort of not staring at her, of just hoping Lillian looks at her.

“Hurry up.” Lillian’s voice is a hiss. Lena’s head twitches and Lillian finally realises something isn’t right. “Stop moving.” Her eyes don’t leave Kara, but her mouth bites the words in Lena’s ear.

Lena’s body relaxes, the veins that had stood out on her neck easing.

“Seconds,” Lena says. “Not minutes.”

“What?” Lillian asks.

Lena is smiling. It’s not the one Kara remembers, from her office, the light dancing around her as she lights up when Kara walked in. It’s not the sad smile after her mother had been taken away in a police car. It’s not the care free one, moments after she’d come undone on Kara’s fingers in her office.

It’s grim. It’s satisfied.

It is, really, a little reminiscent of the one her mother had given not long ago. But for utterly different reasons.

Kara’s head is still cocked, and Lena gives her the slightest of nods, that cut over her eye healed, just the blood left behind. And now, Kara smiles, grins, really. Lillian is staring at her, the gun pushing against Lena’s head, who doesn’t even flinch. The helmet crashes to the floor, and Lillian’s gaze watches it bounce once on the cement, her eyes widening just slightly as Kara brings one red-heeled boot down on it, wires popping and a cracking sound reverberating as it splinters apart.

Lillian’s head comes up, her lips parted in disbelief, Lena doesn’t move, and Kara puts her hands on her hips. Sure, cocky.

“Did you think I was joking, Supergirl?” Lillian’s voice is threateningly low, but Kara can see the uncertainty in her eyes. This is where Kara shines, with people. With words. With conflict—whether it’s escalating it, settling it, or talking it down. Not with plans and repercussions. Kara steps forward, over the pieces of helmet, and Lillian steps back, Lena going with her, unresisting.

Lena could move so easily. Why doesn’t she?

Does she want to see where this goes?

Both of their eyes are trained on Kara.

Kara keeps taking slow steps towards them, the gap slowly closing.

“I _will_ shoot her,” Lillian’s elbow comes up, parallel to the floor, a right angle to her body.

“You won’t.” Kara is sure of that. “She’s your daughter.”

Kara couldn’t risk it, when Lena was vulnerable. But Lillian can’t mean it. She wouldn’t risk it.

And Kara can challenge it, now.

“One more step, and it’s done, Supergirl.”

“I don’t think so, Lillian.”

Kara flicks her eyes to Lena, pale again, and staring at her now, no longer flushed. Lena gives another tiny nod and Kara is suddenly in front of Lillian, only a few feet of space between them, Lena so close Kara could take a few steps and let her finger run down her cheek of she wanted.

Lillian is staring at her, Lena’s gaze is on her face. Lena really could get out of the grip so effortlessly, but here are Kara and Lena, waiting to call Lillian’s bluff.

“Last warning,” Lillian says.

Kara steps forward, not using super speed, giving Lillian time to consider.

The movement is so easy to catch. Kara follows the fastest of humans like they’re in slow motion, her reflexes too sharpened. The trigger is pulled, and the sound of the gun is painfully loud, the gun kicking back from Lena’s head.

And Lena doesn’t even move, the bullet bouncing off to hit the opposite wall.

Instead, she turns her head to her mother, nose to nose, Lillian’s eyes wide, her mouth gaping. Lena pivots, takes one step back, easily moving out of Lillian’s grip, and floats a foot above the ground until she’s next to Kara, slowly coming back to earth with a gentle tap on the floor with each boot. So strange, still, to see her fly, deflect bullets, use laser vision. She throws off so much heat. Kara can feel it along her entire side. Lena’s heart is racing. Even faster than before.

The serum does bad things if taken too often.

Lillian raises the gun and instinct almost makes Kara step in front of Lena, despite the strength she radiates, the serum hot in her blood. Lillian aims it straight at Lena’s chest, fires again, and again, the bullets clinking away, the material of the black suit holding up.

Two useless shots seem to be enough to make Lillian give up and she lowers the gun slowly.

And then Kara is in front of Lillian, twisting her wrist back until she drops the gun and pushing her against the wall, forearm over her throat. There’s a buzzing in Kara’s ears, her blood rushing through her veins.

“You shot her.”

Lillian’s eyes bore into Kara’s. “She’s alive.”

“You had no idea that would happen.”

“I had no idea my daughter was so stupid.”

“Lena is anything but.” Kara so wants to push down against her windpipe. To let this anger boiling under her skin out. Her eyes are hot, her vision burning with the need to explode at the woman she has pinned to the wall. But they need answers. Lillian is human, Kara can’t do this. As much as, for the first time in her life, she wants to. “She’s outsmarted you.”

“Well.” Lillian’s gaze goes to Lena behind, then back to Kara. “About time she showed some potential.”

“I want answers, Lillian.”

“Don’t we all?”

Kara pushes down, just a little, and Lillian gasps. “Tell me what your plan was.”

“No.” How is her voice so calm, still? “You’ll have to take me into custody.”

Kara pushes a little more, and her face goes red. “It’s over. Tell me.”

And then Lena’s front is grazing Kara’s back, burning hot, and Kara turns her head just slightly. Lena is staring at her mother, her gaze cold. “She wanted the alien detection technology. The government is involved, half of them are indoctrinated into Cadmus. Funding has been funnelled into it. This place was government, once, and the branch supplying Cadmus kept it. The US government is infiltrated.”

Lillian is almost smiling. “So you have learned some things. Fine, yes.” She stares at Kara like she’s reading the weather, blasé and so unaffected. “We are a secret branch of the government. There was a plan, to duplicate the alien detection technology L-Corp developed on a massive scale. A takeover, which would not be hard in today’s climate, of Cadmus representatives. Then full scale extermination.”

Something sick roils in Kara’s stomach. “Extermination?”

“Yes.”

Like Mars. Like so many things. There’s only the sound of Lillian’s heavy breathing in the room, her heartbeat, finally panicked. And Lena’s, racing behind her.

“You’re sick, Lillian.” Kara means every word, yet Lillian doesn’t even flinch.

“What’s sick is the loss of the human race.” There’s a gleam in her eye. “Genocide of the people who really belong on this planet. Our resources, so few and far between, are being prioritised to those who shouldn’t even be here.” Lillian, her fingers scrabbling at Kara’s forearm, looks back at Lena, those fingers stilling against Kara’s skin. “Speaking of ill, you don’t look well, darling.”

“I feel just fine.” Lena’s voice is strong, but Kara almost can’t concentrate past the racing heart. The heat she’s throwing off.

“You say that now.” Lillian is looking at Lena as if she’s sharing a secret. “Give it time.”

Kara wants to wipe that smile off her face. To crush her. She’s taunting Lena: she shot Lena, all the while thinking it would actually kill her.

Taking a deep breath, Kara doesn’t even turn her head.

“Lena. Can you open the door?”

For a second, Kara thinks she won’t go, but then she does, a rush of air all she leaves behind, so quick, and Kara hears her hands on the door just a second later.

And then something is jammed into Kara’s side, and she’s dropping to the ground, electricity pumping through her.

It’s agony. It rivals Livewire. And Kara can’t stop it. She can’t move. Lillian’s standing over her, a device jammed into Kara’s side. There’s a scream, and it could be from her.

“Stop.”

Is that Lena?

The pain gets worse, everything hurts and Kara doesn’t understand.

“You wouldn’t.” Lillian’s voice.

“You did to me. Stop.”

It doesn’t stop.

Kara just wants the pain to end, but her body can’t move. She can’t react. Her muscles contracting. It shouldn’t hurt like this, yet somehow it gets even words and her back arches away from the ground.

A bang, and it finally stops. Kara is sucking in air, residual jolts making her muscles twitch, the cement cool on her back. The ceiling sluggishly comes into focus, the lights buzzing, other sounds joining it. When her body is still, she can finally sit up.

Lena is standing over her, a gun raised, the barrel smoking, just slightly. She’s pale, the blood drained from her face, sweat over her forehead and she’s staring down, but not at Kara. Kara turns, still half sprawled on the ground, pain ebbing from her limbs, to see Lillian, a perfect hole in her forehead, blood spilling out.

An object in her hand, whatever it was that electrocuted Kara.

Kara looks away.

“Lena.”

Lena is still staring at her mother and Kara has no idea what to say.

“Lena.”

She blinks and looks to Kara. “She used that on us.” Her voice is hollow. “She wanted a weapon strong enough to debilitate us, when needed.” Lena lowers the gun, finally, it hanging useless in her hand. “It took weeks to perfect. I didn’t know she had it on her tonight.”

Kara’s palms dig into the ground and Lena stands over her. They both blink, words rising on Kara’s tongue and dying before she can utter them. Lena shot her mother, to stop her hurting Kara and Kara has no idea what to say. The presence of her body presses down on them and Kara wants to stand and pull Lena into her, to wrap her arms around her and see if she’s okay. To run desperate fingers over her skin and follow them with her lips, to hold her together.

But part of her wants to step away, give Lena space.

None of her has any idea what Lena wants.

Then Lena is turning on her heel and she throws the gun away, not even watching it clatter along the floor. She flashes to the door, a blur, and turns the circular handle without a hint of effort.

“What are you doing?

Lena doesn’t even turn around. “Come with me.”

Kara stands, whatever Lillian did has eased, and closes the gap between them just as Lena pulls the door open. They step back as it swings and are greeted by raised guns, all pointed at their faces.

Alex’s face, thunder in her eyes, is right at the front.

“Supergirl,” Alex breathes the word, half exasperation, half relief. Her gun turns to Lena, her team doing the same.

“She’s on our side,” Kara blurts.

Because she is. She really is. One hundred percent on their side, and that reality has hardly sunk into Kara’s mind.

Lena Luthor is on their side.

Kara was right.

None of the guns move and Lena stands tall next to her.

“Agent Danvers.” Her sister’s eyes are narrowed and no one lowers their weapons. “Alex,” Kara pleads, instead.

Her sister’s gaze flicks to her and then back to Lena. Slowly, she lowers her weapon. “Stand down. If Supergirl says she’s with us, she’s with us.”

The guns lower and Lena doesn’t even wait. She walks forward, the team parting quickly. Kara follows her and Alex falls into step behind her, “Assess that room,” she calls over her shoulder. “Supergirl? What’s going on?”

“Lillian is dead.” Lena’s back is so straight in front of her, her feet thumping down the corridor, then over a cat walk.

“So is Henshaw.”

Kara wishes that didn’t leave her feeling satisfied. “We have information on what the plan was, how deep this goes.”

“Good.” Alex is hurrying to keep up with them. “Our team is hacking the files, everyone found is in custody. Winn's on his way to get into the system properly—we can find proof of that.”

Kara is barely listening. Lena is leading them into the bowels of the building, they’re deep and far underground. Their footsteps pound down steps, clank over metal walkways.

They stop at the end of a hallway, a metal door facing them with a flashing keypad.

“We couldn’t get in here,” Alex says. “Not even with our equipment.”

Lena pins in a code and the door hisses, opening automatically.

“Never mind,” Alex says.

Lena doesn’t turn around as she steps through, but says, “Raise your weapon. There are scientists in here. Though I doubt anyone will fight.”

And as they step through, she’s right. This room is high tech, filled with equipment Kara can’t begin to understand. It looks like a biomedical lab, microscopes and benches and glass door refrigerators. Computers line one wall, blinking and beeping, laptops and screens on the benches. There are three people, all in lab coats. Every one of them raises their arms in the air as soon as they see Alex’s gun.

“Against the wall by the door, on your knees.”

They all follow Alex’s command and she stands next to them, gun ready, and Kara turns. Lena is standing in the middle of the room. Her skin is flushed again, no longer a ghostly white. It’s like it was when she first took the serum. Her forehead glistens, eyes feverish in the hyper fluorescent lighting,

“This is all of it.”

Kara stares at her, steps forward. There are only a few feet between them, the air warm. It’s so bright in there, compared to the other rooms.

“All of what?” Kara asks.

Lena looks around, her eyes going over everything. “The research. The results. The serums, the methods to create it. This is where we were injected. If things went bad, we were dragged to the other lab to be monitored. Everything. _Everything_ is here.”

Her eyes land back on Kara, so green, vibrant. Sparking with anger, with repercussions—with things Kara can’t name.

“All of it?” Kara asks.

Lena nods. “The computers hold everything. The backups, the codes to unlocking what they did from your DNA. Most importantly, the fridges hold the latest serum.” Her gaze is on them. “That serum’s evolution alone killed forty. Some volunteers, some kidnapped.”

Kara’s breathes in sharply.

“Do you want to keep it?” Lena asks.

Kara shakes her head, her skin itching. “No.”

“Good,” Lena says.

Her fingers curl around a computer screen near her fingers, and like it’s nothing, she picks up and hurls it to the ground. A fridge opposite Kara holds vials, all bright red, almost glowing, and Kara hears Lena smash something else as Kara’s fingers tremble while she reaches for a stool.

That’s her blood. They used it to hurt, to maim. They used it against Lena. It’s in Lena’s body now, allowing her to slam her fist into a computer and not even flinch. To fly across the room and pull wires from computers.

Those people, lined in beds.

Shards of glass sail as the stool soars through the glass door of the fridge. Kara’s vision is red. Her hands shred folders, break screens, pull wires. The serum is a puddle on the floor, and Kara sends beams of laser at it, burning any trace into nothing. Lena is a blur of movement, tearing at anything her hands touch, her eyes a glow Kara will never be used to seeing on them.

Neither stop until nothing is recognisable, back to back in the middle of the room, chaos littering the ground around them, smoke rising from some of the machines.

When Kara looks up, Alex is watching her, face like stone, her jaw clenching. Her eyes seem wet.

There, Kara’s eyes still glowing a little, power in her fists, Kara has never felt more alien.

Lena’s shoulder brushes her own and Kara almost steps back from the heat of it. She turns, and Lena trembles, wavers.

“Lena?”

“Too…too many doses.” She wavers again and Kara’s hand shoots out, clasping her by the forearm, fingers on impenetrable skin. “But I’m fine. I just. We need to go to another level, one down. Containment.”

“What? No. We need to get you to a doctor.”

Lena shakes her head. “I promised him.”

“Who?”

“My inside man.” Lena looks at her, then at Alex. “He knows you both. He didn’t tell me how. But if it weren’t for Jeramiah, this wouldn’t have worked.”

The air is gone, Kara is sure. Sucked out of the room. Alex is next to her. “Where is he?” Her voice is a hiss.

Lena’s gaze is unfocused. “One floor down…”

“Lena…”

“Maybe the dose was not my best idea…”

Lena smiles, likes it’s sadly funny, and then her knees go out from under her and Kara catches her, pulls her into her arms, against her chest.

“Lena?” Her eyes roll back. Kara looks up. The scientists on the floor are staring at her, terrified. “What can we do?”

They shake their heads, but one, a woman, licks her lips. Lena’s heart beats so fast it’s almost a hum. “We’ve had some success with transfusions. Some. But, it was never a priority to fix…”

Kara looks to Alex. “I’m going to the DEO. You get Jeremiah.”

Alex nods, eyes wide and then Kara is running as fast as she can.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The feedback last chapter blew my freaking mind. you all rock and I read each of your comments and grin like mad. Thanks so much for the ongoing kudos and stuff. Just a couple more chapters left. Eek!

Panic is not a feeling Kara is used to. Blind panic, filtering through her system and invading her muscles is uncomfortable, the feeling pricking along her skin, her heart racing in her chest. The sky is a blur, stars leaving streams of light past them as she flies as fast as she can to the DEO, and can only hope the call she put through her coms has been heeded and they’re waiting for her.

There’s an itch in the back of her mind, to go faster, and she does, a clap of sound reverberating behind her.

Humans normally can’t tolerate a speed like this, but that serum is still in Lena’s body even if it’s made her sick.

Lena’s heart _is_ a hum, like a bird racing too fast and something catches in Kara’s chest, something like breaking, at the thought that she’s just waiting for it to stop. To give in. Surely Lena shouldn’t be able to survive her heart racing so fast? Is it the serum allowing her too, even as it’s the cause? Lena’s cheek rests on Kara’s collarbone, her breath puffing over her skin, and everything about her burns. She’s so warm.

Kara wants Alex. She wants Alex to be waiting on the other side, because she just knows she’s going to have to hand Lena over to people and stand back, useless. That’s when Alex would normally step up beside her, arms crossed, their sides just brushing, and would wait with her.

It goes down just as Kara thought it would. Red-heeled boots tap down on the ground as she flies through the window of the DEO, and a crowd surrounds her. White lab coats flick and stethoscopes are in ears and Lena is tugged from her arms, and it takes everything Kara has not to pull her in tighter, to keep her against her chest. To pull them together and fly them away where none of this can touch them.

But she lets them take her. And Lena is on a gurney and being connected to transportable machines, a beeping sound that’s almost continuous filling the room as they whisk her away to the the medical bay.

Kara stands by the window, a lonely silhouette, her cape swaying behind her in the breeze they left behind, her arms raised like she can pull Lena back.

What is she supposed to do, now?

Waiting has never been something she’s good at. Letting the chips fall where they may, patiently waiting out something nowhere within her control. They have no real information, no way of knowing how to combat what’s pulling Lena’s cells apart from the inside.

Gritting her teeth, she takes off through the window again.

Why hadn’t she thought of this when she’d left with Lena?

Blind panic, most likely.

With how fast she can go now, not having to slow her pace for J’Onn or M’Gann, Kara gets back there as fast as she’d just made it back to the DEO. She races through the corridors, passing confused DEO operatives, focused on one thing. When she bursts into the room Lena and she had destroyed, the scientists are still there, on the floor with someone standing over them.

Kara doesn’t even look at him.

She stands over the woman that had given the information about the transfusion, hands on her hip and cape swirling around her. “You’re coming with me.”

The woman, wide-eyed, stares up at her and before she can even nod, Kara is hauling her up and racing through the heart of the place to get back to open air, leaving the protests of the operative behind. The second cool air brushes Kara’s cheeks, she takes off for the sky, hating to manage her speed so as not to destroy the fragile human she grips with one hand by the back of her labcoat and shirt, letting her dangle as she flies over the desert and heads for the city, the ground far away and a blur.

“This is quite terrifying,” the woman chokes out.

“So is what you’ve been doing to people with my blood.”

The woman seems to decide not speaking is the best course of action.

Kara lands back at the DEO—not as gently as she had while holding Lena—and the woman stumbles as she finds her feet.

“Follow me.” Kara walks past her and hears her following quickly, little dancing steps to keep up.

“What—what am I doing here?” The woman’s voice is nervous, twitchy.

Kara turns sharply down a corridor. “You’re going to help save Lena. Our medics have no experience with this, and you do.”

“I—okay.”

Kara bursts through the door, vaguely aware in the back of her mind how dramatic an entrance she keeps making but just doesn’t care.

The room is in chaos. Bags of blood are hanging, red, deep red, the tubes the same colour winding into cannulas in Lena’s arms. Who, despite the blood being pumped into her, is pale. So pale she’s almost the same colour as the stiff white sheet under her, and Kara wishes she was flushed and clammy again, like before. At least Lena looked like she had life in her, then. Life clinging to her, refusing to be dragged out.

She doesn’t look that way now.

One of the doctors look up. “Who’s this?”

“One of the Cadmus doctors. She’s the one who told us transfusions help.”

The woman steps forward as she pushes her sleeves up past her elbows, her eyes trained on Lena.

“The serum causes their metabolism to speed up, and too many doses trips something. It turns their own blood cells against each other and starts destroying themselves from the inside.”

The doctor blinks at her. “Is a transfusion enough?”

“It slowed it. That’s all I mean by we had some success.”

The words are echoing around Kara’s brain, not ones she’d expected to hear when she’d dragged this woman back with her. She’d wanted immediate action, solutions, for this to be fixed. For them to connect something to Lena, or pump something into her and to watch her eyelashes flutter open, casting shadows on her cheeks and her eyes finally focusing on Kara.

Not silence as everyone stares at the woman and Lena’s heart beat buzzes away, her breathing too fast and everything just _wrong_.

“That’s all you have?” Kara asks.

The woman swallows, her gaze going from Lena to the staff staring at her. Her hands are trembling and Kara realises, distantly, that so are her own. She balls them into fists.

“I—well, yes. We were told to focus on a new serum, and not a solution.”

“You have to have something?” One of the nurses looks at her, her eyebrows raised in clear dissatisfaction.

Kara steps closer, fists still at her side, side on to the woman, whose eyes stay on Lena, wan and a shadow of herself in the bed. “If you help her, I will note your cooperation when you’re on trial.”

Her voice is low, a timbre she barely uses.

The woman’s throat bobs as she swallows heavily. “We spoke of aspheresis as an option. To do an exchange transfusion. Removing the entire blood supply bit by bit and replacing it with new. It should, in theory, work.” She clears her throat. “If the patient isn’t too far gone.”

Kara’s head whips around to look at the doctors.

“Lets do it,” one answers.

The room bursts into energy and Kara is ushered out the room. There aren’t many people who have the courage to glare down a shaking, red cheeked Supergirl, but nurses have never hesitated and Kara finally backs away from the narrowed eyes and is ejected into the too-bright corridor.

It’s worse, there, than watching a scene she doesn’t entirely understand. Here everything is bright lights and a hall to pace and the ability to listen in and not understand what she hears.

Over and over, her mind replays that sad smile Lena had given right before her eyes had rolled up and she’d collapsed. The racing heart and high temperature Kara had just ignored. The sight of her in the bed, colourless and unmoving.

As Kara’s boots stamp a monotonous rhythm on the hard floor, she dreads hearing that beep from the room flat line. Each step she takes she imagines blooming a bruise over her insides, a testament to the vigil she walks, proof she was here. It could be hours she walks it, or maybe only one, and then there’s a voice that makes Kara almost fall apart right in the corridor.

“Ka—Supergirl.”

Alex. At the end of the corridor, walking towards her. Kara feels small, then, a feeling she never has in her suit, never has usually, especially near Alex. But she does. She feels small and young and breakable. When Alex wraps her arms around her, Kara buries her face into her neck. It takes everything in her to not sob into Alex’s skin, to let that thing that’s inflating in her chest burst and break all over her sister, right here in the DEO where people are supposed to see her as nothing but a hero.

Guilt twists in her stomach and she pulls back. “Where’s Jeremiah?”

Alex pulls away but slips her hand into Kara’s and tugs her down the corridor. Kara lets herself be pulled, even as half of her wants to stay behind and not leave that space until she knows what will happen to Lena.

“Any news on Lena?” Alex asks her, ignoring her question.

“No. They’re trying to replace her blood or something. They have no idea if it’ll work.”

Alex stops outside a door and faces her, her expression soft. “I’m sorry Kara.”

Something swells in Kara’s throat and she nods. “Maybe she’ll be okay.”

“What happened in there?”

The glint of the gun against Lena’s temple, the trickle of blood from a gash in her forehead, the racing of her heart. Lillian, cold eyes and cold words. Two bombs set of in Lena’s name that killed people, all to keep her manipulated and controlled—and _still_ Lena found a way. A serum made with Kara’s blood that’s left Lena near death and countless gone. Electricity that had pulsed through Kara’s muscles, agony and the terrifying feel of being unable to move. A shot of a gun, Lena’s face as she stared down at the mother she’d killed.

“Later,” Kara says. “Please?”

Alex cocks her head, then nods. “Okay.”

“Is Jeremiah okay?” Alex nods and relief overshadows everything else, just for a moment. Kara’s eyes fill and she smiles, tight, in spite of herself, and curls her fingers around Alex’s arm, needing the connection. “He is?”

And Alex’s eyes are shining, wet in the fluorescent lights overhead. Kara could swear her bottom lip quivers. “He really is.”

Alex sounds like she isn’t sure if she should believe it. Like she’s been offered a gift she would never have been able to even imagine, too good to be true and threatening to be torn away at any moment.

It’s so easy to forget, sometimes, how fragile Alex is. Her front is always steel, more so even than Kara pulls off as Supergirl. She exudes calm, and if not calm, a storm you’d never want to cross. Even Kara trips and leans on her too much, forgetting that Alex is the type of person to carry the weight of the world if it needs it and not so much as mutter when her knees start to shake.

But then moments like when she first spoke Maggie come out, the edge of her eye carrying something so vulnerable, as if she’s afraid to disappoint, to lose something she holds dear. And it’s there again, now, in the quake of her lip, the pink blooming in her cheeks.

“I just, never really believe it…”

Kara nods. “I know.”

“He really wants to see you. Mom’s on her way.”

And Alex opens the door and Kara steps in after her, barely through it when strong arms are around her.

“Kara,” Jeremiah breathes, and, for a short second, it’s like the universe has snapped back into place.

 

* * *

 

Kara doesn’t leave the DEO the rest of the night. She ends up back in Lena’s room, still hours later, and still no change. The room is in shadows, the lights off and machines beeping away.

“We replaced her entire blood volume,” the nurse that had glared Kara out of the room whispers across the bed as she does something with a fluid bag connected to Lena’s hand. “Her temperature is normal. Her heart rate is still over one hundred, but down from before.”

Kara sits, her skirt falling around her thighs and her cape pulled around over front like a blanket. She’s passed caring who sees her like this on the medical ward. They’ve seen Kara fall apart before and undoubtedly will again. There are no operatives, no one to put a show on for. Her gaze doesn’t leave Lena. Her skin isn’t as deathly white as before, but she’s still far too pale, deep bruises under her eyes.

“What can we do now?” Kara asks.

“Wait.”

The nurse moves around the room, checking a few more things before she slips out, the door closing quietly behind her.

Jeremiah is being treated for dehydration, but beyond that is fine, physically. He’s been left alone, they all are, until a debriefing tomorrow. Alex is with him, Eliza arrived hours ago. And in the warmth of excitement and happiness of reunion, Kara had only let herself bask for a short while before coming back here.

She is so happy Jeremiah is back. Eliza’s entire expression had crumpled in on itself at the sight of him, Alex’s voice breaking as she’s assured her mother he was fine. It feels whole in that room, like something has mended.

But Kara can’t completely feel that way.

Not when Lena is lying here, on the verge of dying, after doing everything she could to tear her mother’s organisation down from the inside. She put the serum in her blood, aware this could be the consequence, without a second thought.

Lena deserves so much more than anything she’s been given. And Kara wants her to wake up, because she wants nothing else than to be the person who gives her more.

Kara wants to kiss her without doubt on her tongue. She wants to lose herself in the sighs Lena gives without having to second guess herself. She wants to lie under a blanket of stars and listen to the chatter of Lena’s heart and ask her anything and everything. She wants to help Lena repair that torn look in her eyes, as best as she can.

But to do that, Lena needs to wake up.

Kara pulls her feet up onto the chair, wrapping her cape around them and hugging them to her chest. She rests her chin on top and stares at Lena, as if Kara alone can will her to open her eyes.

Kara would give anything to see the green of Kryptonite emerge from behind her lids.

But all she can do is wait.

 

* * *

 

“Supergirl.”

Kara twitches, then jolts. Blinking around the room, she yawns, her cape falling away, still attached at the back. Alex is in the doorway, face pinched. Remembering, Kara’s eyes flash to Lena.

Nothing different.

The bruises under her eyes are darker, and maybe, maybe there’s a touch more colour to her cheeks. But that’s all. She still lays, a ghost of herself, the machines surrounding her beeping away.

“Kara.”

Alex whispers it this time, and Kara looks back at her in the doorway, the light from the corridor behind her.

“Is Jeremiah okay?”

“He’s fine. But we need you.”

A very small part of Kara, for once, wants to say no. To curl her legs back on the chair and pull her cape back around herself and simply sit here and will Lena to wake up. That selfish little spot inside her just wants to ask, “When don’t they need me?”

But it’s not who she is.

Besides, that part of her that wants to stay would go crazy, soon, with waiting.

And at that thought, she stands, her cape falling to swish behind her. Action. Something to do. To punch. A way to distract her mind. Suddenly, that’s all she wants.

“What is it?” Kara asks.

“The world is still going mad.”

Alex says it as if it’s fact, and not absurd. Like the world going mad is just logical.

Sometimes, Kara can’t help but wonder why the human race seems so intent on tearing itself apart. But then she remembers her father created a toxin that would kill anyone that wasn’t Kryptonian, and she wonders at more than just that. There are days her head aches, just with the thought of the way worlds can be so similar even as they’re so different.

At the door, Alex starts to walk down the corridor and Kara hovers, just a second, turning around, her hand against the door frame. The light is spilling over Lena’s bed, long shadows filling the spaces. She’s unmoving. Finally, Kara leaves, fingers trailing down the frame, and follows Alex back to the control room.

There’s exhaustion itching in the back of Kara’s mind and from here, she can just see the light starting to tinge the horizon a light blue. It’s so early.

Or so late.

But apparently, the protests haven’t stopped. Tomorrow—well, today—J’Onn will meet with government officials, the President is already on her way, and the information they’ve collected will be spilled. They have photos, they’re collecting statements from those captured and now desperate to talk their way out, from those kidnapped and who managed to survive. Jeremiah holds so much inside information it will take days for him to divulge it all. The news will be lit up come daybreak, this story leaking fast.

Everything’s about to blow up, and they have no way of knowing what way that will turn the people who are on either side, and those that lurk in the middle.

“Maggie called through, she needs back up in the main square, and also another squad has asked for help down by the docks.”

Kara cocks her head, staring at the screens in front of them, a collage of images, news reports, thermal readings, footage from the raid on Cadmus headquarters. It’s all jumbled and she has the feeling that the next few weeks are going to be as chaotic as the last few, even if in a different way.

And Lena may not be here for it.

Kara grits her jaw.

No. She has to be. She will be.

She looks to J’Onn. “Call me if there’s any change?”

He doesn’t even have to ask what for. He nods, once.

“I’m going to the square,” Kara says.

“Supergirl, we should—”

Kara flies out anyway, leaving Alex’s protests behind her. It’s an unfair move, she knows, but duty is calling and now all Kara wants is to be out of the building and moving where she can help. And not only that, she has three hours until she has to be at work.

The time passes with Kara pushing back some of the harder aliens that have crawled out of the woodwork and are trying to cause more mayhem and take advantage of the uncertainty. She drops three off at the DEO before it’s even time to go to work. Maggie is wan, shadows under her eyes, but she updates Kara with her shoulders back and her eyes alert. The two sides haven’t stopped and don’t look like they’re going to. Kara drags her into a corner and fills her in on everything, what Cadmus really was and what’s going to leak in just a few hours.

Right before she needs to get home to be ready in time for a work, a bomb goes off and Kara is dragging everyone she can to safety and then putting the roaring flames out with a gale of icy air. She runs into work late, Snapper’s glare colder than the breath she used to douse the fire. The smell of smoke lingers in her hair and she swears she can taste ash.

It’s the taste of despair. Of wondering if it doesn’t matter if Cadmus the organisation is in the process of being torn down when their ideals have lit something in the nasty parts of people.

Her day never ends. There’s no change in Lena’s condition even though she messages Alex and J'Onn too many times, so Kara throws herself into interviews and press conferences. It’s at lunch time that the President calls one and Kara stands at the back as she makes a statement about the loss of liberty and democracy that almost won. Cadmus is laid bare and just how deep it went is dug into the light, the planned governmental take over highlighted.

The press erupts with questions. Will the members of government proved to be involved be charged with treason? How can they be sure they have everyone? Do they really believe that the concerns Cadmus raised are unfounded, even if their methods were extreme? What will be done about the ongoing discontent? The serum used to create the Super Cads, can it be recreated? How does anyone really know L-Corps involvement, especially considering the ties with CEO Lena Luthor, and the undebatable fact that she was seen working with them, and under the effects of the serum?

Before she can think twice, Kara slips out and flies in as Supergirl, cape billowing, to land next to the President. Nerves twist her belly, but the President turns to her.

“Supergirl?”

And the President even steps back for Kara to say something.

The crest on Kara’s chest feels too large for this, and Kara feels too small, but she steps up and clears her throat, flashes going off around the room and far too many eyes blinking at her. Those words, damning Lena when none of them know what she did, play over in her head. None of them know the resistance Lena gave, the look in her eye in a light filled warehouse as she flew and told Kara people were listening. The expression on her face as she held a smoking gun, her mother dead on the floor.

Kara puts her hands on her hips and stands straight. She juts her chin, and her voice, when she speaks, is sure. Gravelled. Low. She’s exhausted, but right then she couldn’t care less.

“We have indisputable proof that Lena Luthor was in fact working from the inside of Cadmus to bring the organisation down.”

Someone stands. “What is that proof?”

“Eye witnesses.”

Jeremiah. Kara herself. Multiple statements and more to be collected from those inside Cadmus now in custody.

“Who?”

Kara grits her teeth. “To start: me.” She has their attention. The word of Supergirl. “I witnessed firsthand Lillian Luthor’s manipulation of her daughter and Lena Luthor’s quick thinking that lead to the head of Cadmus truly being taken down. There are files documenting her attempt to destroy the serum before it could be viable. It was she who managed to get the information to me that lead to the raid even taking place, and being successful. I can’t say much more, but—” Kara stares around the room, and wide eyes all stare back at her, drinking in her words “—I trust Lena Luthor, and vouch for her. She’s on the good side.”

The room erupts into more questions and Kara turns and flies out.

She really just took over a presidential press conference to defend Lena.

Alex is going to kill her.

 

* * *

 

The buzz of her words wear off by the time she’s back at the DEO hours later. Jeremiah is in a hotel with Eliza and Alex is with them. Kara should go, she saw them in the early afternoon but should again.

But she needs to see Lena.

The Internet has blown up with news, with Kara’s defence of Lena, and therefore L-Corp, and with the truth of Cadmus not only being linked to the government, but funded by it.

Conspiracy theorists are already going wild.

The pictures are everywhere, the statements about the experiments and kidnapping performed by Cadmus. The extremists are in loud agreeance with their motives, but many who had been fuelled by fear retract at the news, the truth of Cadmus’s brutal ideas and actions too much.

Her feet hit the ground inside the DEO and Kara walks through the control room and manages to avoid anyone who may stop her. J’Onn is in interrogations, his abilities too useful not to be.

The medical bay is quiet and Kara walks through the corridors, freezing in the doorway of Lena’s room.

Lena is sitting up, her back against the bed and her cheeks pink. She looks tired, beyond exhausted. She looks perfect. A nurse is by her side, stethoscope to her chest.

“Supergirl.” The nurse puts the stethoscope around her neck. “Just in time. She woke up thirty minutes ago.” She turns to Lena, who is staring at Kara, unblinking. “You know where your call bell is, the doctors will be in in a minute.”

And she disappears, Kara even barely feeling her walk past.

Lena finally blinks, once, slowly. She licks her bottom lip like she’s considering her words, and Kara steps forward, her heart going wild.

Lena’s own is beating steadily. A normal rhythm: a normal, healthy speed. Something grows in Kara’s throat, swells, almost stops her breathing, and Kara realises, there, that she had really thought Lena may not make it.

“You’re awake.”

Kara hates herself, sometimes, and the way she states the obvious. She tries not to gape, at least. But Lena is there, alive, breathing.

“I am.” Her voice is a rasp, and Lena cocks her head, and the motion is just so _Lena_ that warmth spreads throughout Kara’s stomach. “Your takeover of the President’s press conference was just on the TV.” She nods towards the TV, now muted, a news anchor mouthing away. Kara looks back at her. “Did you interrupt the President to defend my honour?”

“I did.”

And Lena laughs, low, the sound rich and warm and a little incredulous.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh all of your feedback and comments have just been amazing. Seriously, thank you for everything from your thoughtful responses to your incoherent screaming--each one/type has been great to read. You all rock. Thanks for sticking with this strange, unplanned story. A few more chapters to come after this one!

Before Kara can even open her mouth, heat on her cheeks and her lips curling up, the doctor bustles in, her hair in a sloppy bun and all business. She talks fast, rapid speech and Lena blinks up at her, nodding, those hollows under her eyes too dark, a pinch to her lips as she nods.

Exhaustion.

They need to talk. To actually use their words, now there’s no one listening in and Lena isn’t undercover and they’re both not embroiled in a plot to do with taking over the world.

But now is probably not the time.

Even though, Kara doesn’t want to go. Her own exhaustion is creeping into her bones. It feels ingrained in her, planted into the fibres of her muscles, soaked into her marrow. The last month has been never ending, and the constant back forth has seemed like it was never going to end. For awhile, Kara felt like second guessing Lena, second guessing herself, was going to eat her alive. Being pulled in so many directions had left her feeling stretched out, breakable, something fragile in her limbs.

The urge to sink into the chair next to Lena’s bed again is almost overwhelming. To be near her, knowing she’s on their side, knowing she’s not about to die, and just sleep.

“Supergirl.”

Kara straightens. The doctor is staring at her. “Yes?”

“We need some privacy.”

And Kara, with one last look at Lena, her eyes vibrantly green even shadowed by bags, nods. “How long?”

“We have a myriad of tests to carry out. Some can wait until tomorrow, but some we need now. Her heart was under a lot of pressure. It’ll be a few hours, and then she’ll need to rest.”

No way of staying.

“I’ll be back in the morning, then? Early?” The question isn’t to the doctor, but to Lena.

Kara could swear there is a flicker of hesitation, but it’s so fast and then Lena’s nodding.

Before she ignores everything just said and sits down, Kara turns, her cape flaring around her and walks out.

It takes three seconds after leaving the medical bay to walk straight into Alex, whose fingers grip her upper arm as she marches past, Kara grimacing and whirling around as she gets tugged after her.

“Alex, I can explain.”

“You took over a presidential press conference.” Alex’s voice is a hiss as they march down an abandoned corridor.

Then she’s yanked through a door. “Well, I—yeah.”

They’re jammed in a bathroom again within seconds. At least this one isn’t in the depths of the building—Alex can’t be planning a big blow up.

But then Alex turns around as she shuts the door and crosses her arms over her chest. One eyebrow quirks up and her jaw is set, and Kara wishes she had control over one eyebrow like that. This look, this “don’t give me bullshit” face, is the one Kara has moulded her own on, but can really only pull together when she’s Supergirl.

But here, in front of Alex, even in her full suit, she can’t seem to muster her own in response.

“Kara—” Alex’s voice is still a low hiss. “What were you thinking?”

“I kind of wasn’t?” Kara tries for a sheepish smile which almost weakens that grumpy face.

Almost. There’s a twitch of Alex’s lips.

Instead, her eyebrows bunch together. Kara could say she misses that one judgemental one. “That was a presidential speech.”

“And Supergirl got away with it?”

“That’s not even the point. What on earth possessed you to do that?”

Kara throws up her arms. “I don’t know, Alex. They were picking Lena apart and she did so much for all of us. If it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t have Jeremiah back and Cadmus would still be going and Lillian would be taking over the government and trying to exterminate every alien on Earth. And I just, I didn’t think.”

Alex huffs, her jaw tight. It relaxes quickly, and she cocks her head at Kara. “I still think that was stupid.” She pauses again, eyes focused on Kara. “Is Lena okay?”

“She’s awake.”

“Oh. Good.” And Alex even manages to sound genuine. “That’s really good news. So what’s wrong?”

Alex always knows.

“I just,” Kara bites her lip, “I have no idea, uh, what’s going on with Lena.”

Something dark flickers in Alex’s gaze. “Ah.”

“Alex.” There’s a whine in Kara’s voice she hates. “How can you still not trust her? After everything?”

“No—I, it’s not that. She was obviously on our side. I just—I’m worried. For you.”

“Don’t be, though.”

“Kind of difficult.”

Kara rolls her eyes, but it leaves something warm behind. “Fine.”

Alex is looking at her, eye too narrow and head cocked.

“What?”

“You… Kara, you look tired?”

“Well, gee, thanks Alex, that’s exactly what—”

“No. I mean, you. Look tired. You normally never look tired.” She pauses, and that silence fills with too much and Kara can’t pull herself together to get a mask down. She never manages with Alex, anyway. “Are you okay?”

Kara deflates and leans against the wall, crossing her arms. She drops her head back against the rough brick and closes her eyes. “I’m exhausted.”

Then the air shifts and Alex is closer. Kara can hear her breathing, can feel the way her gaze is on her face. Kara opens her eyes, and the big, concerned brown ones of her sister are staring at her, soft with concern.

“You haven’t stopped in weeks, Kara. Even Supergirl needs to rest.”

Kara gives her a small smile, her lips curling up even further at the one Alex gives back. “There wasn’t time.”

“There is now though.”

“But, the protests are still going, everything is spiralling now the press knows what happened, arrests are being made everywhere, and I—”

“We have it covered.” Alex says it like her word is final and for once, Kara actually wants to accept it as so.

“What about you?” Kara retaliates. “You haven’t stopped, either.”

“I’m just in for the debriefing, then any of us that have been on constant duty are being sent home. That includes you.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

But Alex doesn’t sound irritated, or exasperated anymore. She sounds as tired as Kara feels. She probably feels worse, being human and all.

“Are you just tired? Or is something else wrong?” Alex asks.

Kara sighs. “No. I just…”

Alex waits her out.

“I’m so, so happy Jeremiah is okay. I really am. It’s like something has, I don’t know, clicked back into place that was wrong for a really long time, you know?”

“I do.” The mention of the father Alex has missed more than anything brings this smile to her face that could be called radiant.

“So, I just, feel guilty, that that’s not where my head is one hundred percent at.”

“That’s—”

“I just, I’m thinking about Lena. And I should be worried about, you know, the city, and Jeremiah.”

“You’re allowed to have things of your own.” Alex’s voice is soft, understanding, and Kara wants to melt into it.

She hadn’t realised how much she needed those words.

“So much has happened,” Kara starts. “And she’s been through so much, and I don’t know what we’re doing.”

“Maybe you should talk to her?”

Kara huffs. “Just like that. So simple.”

“Well, only kissing her every time you get overwhelmed with feelings isn’t going to solve your concerns.”

“I don’t—we don’t—”

“You’ve gone so red.” Alex looks utterly delighted and Kara is wedged between her and the wall and can’t get away from her smug look. “And you were judging Maggie and I the other night.”

Kara narrows her eyes. “You two did—did that, while I was in the apartment and we were supposed to be resting for a super important mission.”

That eyebrows is perked again, and Alex just looks wicked with her wide grin. “And you and Lena haven’t slept together or made out at highly inappropriate times?”

Kara’s mouth drops open to retort, then she snaps it shut.

Alex snorts and turns to the door, holding it open and extremely proud of herself, judging by the state of her expression. “Come on. Let’s go. I’m guessing Lena can’t have visitors, and we can have dinner with Mom and Dad before we sleep for the next ten hours.”

Cheeks still burning, Kara walks past her and straightens her shoulders, trying to look like Supergirl and not like she’s just had her inability to keep her lips to herself around Lena Luthor shoved in her face.

 

* * *

 

Dinner with Eliza, Jeremiah and Alex eases something in Kara, even if only temporarily. Alex shifts from foot to foot as she introduces Maggie to her father and Kara feels warmth bloom in her chest as he stands up and shakes her hand with a wide grin. They order enough take-away food to feed the entire DEO, or, really, just enough to feed four people and a Kryptonian.

With a smile, Jeremiah watches Kara eat and shakes his head. “It’s nice to know some things haven’t changed.”

And there’s a note in there, that Kara recognises but seems to go over other’s heads. Longing and sadness—regret. How long did he sit, performing tasks against his will for Cadmus, or alone in a damp, cold cell, wondering what he was missing? His daughter’s graduation. His wife, every day, the little things she says and does. The moments he should have been a part of.

Kara watches him watch Alex around Maggie, something not unlike wonder on his face as Alex lights up around her, rests a hand on Maggie’s knee easily, as Maggie makes jokes that even Kara cringes at.

Do those missed years haunt him? Will he sit through everything, thinking about all the things he missed and the moments that past by in which he wasn’t even a thought. At one point, he rests a heavy hand on the back of Kara’s head at one point, and something swells in her throat so fast she almost can’t breathe.

It’s so like the weight of her father’s at their dinner table as he walked past her seat. His palm would come down heavy on the crown of her head, and she’d close her eyes, just briefly, and revel in the moment. It had felt like a blessing, like affection and love and everything her father felt for her in one moment.

She goes home late, despite the exhaustion dragging down her eyelids. And, again, despite it all, Kara can’t sleep. Restless, she lies in bed with her sheets tangling up in her constantly shifting legs and stares at the ceiling until she gives up completely and opens her window, stepping out and floating up.

It’s the kind of night that can only be called still.

Not a single cloud blots the sky and she goes as high as she can, to that point she’s always felt was made for her: or rather, that point she has carved out for herself. That place between Earth and space, gravity barely something she’s aware of there, space almost tugging at her fingertips, the planet curving out all around her and National City nothing but a dot below.

The stars are so close she could simply spread her fingers and brush through them. When she was younger and everything was so painfully foreign on Earth, she came here to be closer to Krypton. To see if it could dull that never ending ache in her chest that felt so sharp she used to wonder if it would ever smooth over. The wild thought was always in the back of her mind that if she stayed here long enough, she’d finally figure out which one pulled at her the most: which one felt most like home.

But that never happened.

Even now, there with the stars splayed out overhead like infinity, part of her yearned to shoot into them and go back, and her feet longed for the ground beneath them of Earth.

Sometimes, she wished she could swish her hands through the sky and take some of those stars back to Earth with her, because maybe with them weighing her pockets she’d finally feel whole down there.

Back in her apartment, she pulls out a pad of paper and sketches it, that image, of the Earth below and the stars above, and her figure, floating between.

When she flips the page, she sketches the eyes that have featured in her thoughts far more than they should have the last month. The lips that Kara knows the taste of. Lena’s face takes form crudely—Kara’s never been good at drawing the finer aspects of people. But she keeps going, and only realises half way through that she’s drawn Lena flying, one leg lifted slightly like she’s just taken off, hair floating around her head.

It’s with charcoal on her fingertips and stars in her eyes that she falls asleep.

 

* * *

 

The sun isn’t entirely up, the sky tinged pink at the far edges, but Kara is at the DEO with coffee and a bag of bakery food she didn’t even take anything from on the flight over.

She’s still tired. Those very few hours she managed to get have been nowhere near enough. But she awoke as restless as she’d fallen asleep, and they did say she could come back in the morning. It’s Saturday, apparently—the days have blurred together—and she doesn’t have to be at work today.

The DEO is still bustling, never ending.

Lillian’s actions, the influence of Cadmus, have left a footprint stamped on humanity that is going to take a long time to fade, if ever.

The medical bay, on the other hand, is quiet and Kara freezes at Lena’s door.

Her bed is empty.

Someone clears their throat behind her and Kara spins. The doctor cocks her head.

“She checked herself out an hour ago. Wouldn’t take no for an answer, and we can’t keep her against her will.” Her eyes go to the bag in Kara’s hands. “Is that full of doughnuts?”

“But didn’t she need more tests?”

“She’s assured us she has her own doctor.” The doctor’s eyes are glued on the bag.

Kara needs to get herself together—her mouth is gaping a little. Lena checked herself out? After almost dying and needing a full blood replacement, never mind everything she’s been through the last month? She just…checked herself out and went home? What the hell is she thinking?

With the bag held out, Kara walks past, and the doctor grabs it, grinning almost deliriously. “Thank you.”

Kara’s red boots ring out as she strides down the corridor. “No problem.”

She puts the coffees down on a table and gets out of the DEO before anyone can tell her that they need something.

The air outside is cool, wind whipping her hair around her head. But she doesn’t let herself enjoy it, instead racing through the sky. It takes only minutes to get to Lena’s apartment and she hovers over the building. The press are swamped around a car that’s just pulled up, its windows tinted. Kara scans it with her x-ray vision, and it’s exactly what anyone could guess.

Lena is seated in the back.

Really, it’s a moment she should think things through. But Kara, as she does far too often, doesn’t.

Swooping low, she hovers over the throng of thirsty reporters and then lands just behind them, her feet hitting the ground hard enough to make a sound, to send a slight tremor.

It works. They fall silent for the smallest of seconds, their heads swinging and some let their mouths fall open at the sight of her, hands on her hips, cape fluttering, others widening their eyes and some even smiling. Then they’re shouting.

“Supergirl—did you mean what you said yesterday?”

“How can you be sure?”

“What if it had been a trap?”

“Did you ever doubt her?”

Their voices meld into one and Kara gives them a smile, and they die off as she opens her mouth. “Lena Luthor has my trust. As, I hope, she has the city's. If it weren’t for her, we would still be overrun with Super Cads and this city would be tearing itself apart. Never mind what state our government would be in.” A camera is pointed right at her, a green light flashing, and she looks straight into it. “I hope that National City can become an example of a city that rises up and comes together, and doesn’t let something like where we come from ruin us.” She lets her arms fall to her sides. “Now, I hope you’re all about to prove all those stereotypes about journalists not having any humanity wrong, and let Miss Luthor get to her building and get some rest.”

With a last smile, Kara walks forward and opens the door, the press parting, flashes still going, but people mostly quiet. Lena slips out and stands, pale and with those harsh bruises still under her eyes. But she straightens, shoulders back and gives Kara a nod, then walks through to her door with Kara walking behind her and lets herself into her building, the journalists actually staying back.

Once she’s inside, Kara pushes off and takes for the sky, waiting five minutes for them all not to be looking out for her anymore, then slowly drops back down, her feet touching ground on Lena’s balcony.

The door is open, curtains billowing in the gap.

Kara raps her knuckles on the glass anyway and waits until she hears Lena’s, “Come in.”

That’s where Kara’s politeness ends. She marches through, her arms crossed. Lena is sitting on her sofa, and Kara flashes back to the last time she was there, and Kara stood right where she is just now. Lillian’s presence in the doorway, and Lena, so small and broken where she sat.

Knowing a bomb had been set off moments before, all because she’d told her mother “no”.

“Lena.” Lena looks up and even the well of green that’s too deep for Kara’s own good doesn’t stop her. “What the hell were you thinking, discharging yourself? You legitimately almost died and you think you shouldn’t stay awhile?”

Despite her clear exhaustion, Lena sits straight on the sofa and blinks up at Kara. “I was thinking there was nowhere I would rest more than my own bed.”

Her voice is measured, spoken as if she’s thinking on each word.

Kara deflates a little. That actually makes sense. “Oh.”

Lena cocks her head. “I have my doctor coming this afternoon, once I’ve slept. He’ll take me in for the other tests the DEO team had in mind if he thinks I need them.”

“If? Lena—”

Her hand comes up and cuts Kara off. “If. I know how the serum works. I’m not dead, which means that side effect is dealt with. And other than that, as far as we could ever tell, once that particular strand of the serum had run out of steam, that was it. It was out of your system. Blood counts usual, completely human—everything. I’m fine, Kara.”

She holds Kara’s gaze, her chin jutting just slightly, and Kara could swear she saw some kind of waver. A look in her eye. A twitch in the muscle of her jaw.

Something.

Kara walks forward and falls to her knees in front of Lena, eye level and close and suddenly, all Kara can smell is her. There’s antiseptic and hospital, but under it all, is Lena. That smell that left Kara giddy as her nose grazed the soft skin behind Lena’s ear, her lips sending a shudder down Lena’s spine.

“Are you?” Kara asks. The anger is nowhere in her voice now. She asks it gently.

Lena is only a few feet away, her gaze still unwavering. “Am I what?”

“Fine?”

“Yes. Even the doctors admitted that.”

“I don’t mean physically.”

Lena blinks, once. Then looks away, and Kara wants to pull her gaze back, to bring that green back in her direction. But she just stays, kneeling, waiting for Lena to come back on her own.

“I’m fine, Kara.”

It’s the same as last time, the sound of her name, after weeks of “Supergirl”. It’s a burble of vowels, her name sounding as if Lena had savoured it a second before letting it spill. Kara would give anything to hear her name said like that every day.

Tentatively, Kara brushes a tendril of hair off of Lena’s cheek, tucks it behind her ear, and Lena’s eyes come back to her. Kara’s breath hitches at the rawness of it, the naked feeling stripped bare in her gaze. “You don’t have to be fine.”

Lena’s eyes close, her eyelashes casting long shadows on her cheeks. Kara’s fingers trail down her neck, splay over it, resting gently, Lena’s pulse bounding steadily against Kara’s palm. It’s soothing, there. Her heat isn’t blazing, the warmth of her skin as it was the night they’d first kissed and Lena had first let Kara’s name spill from her lips, a secret that shouldn’t be out.

When Lena opens her eyes again, slowly, her eyes are glazed, but nothing falls.

Kara wonders if Lena ever cries. If she could ever let herself.

There’s so much about Lena that Kara doesn’t know.

“I killed my mother.”

And Kara has no idea what to say to that, because Lena did. She killed her mother for many reasons, but one of them was Kara herself. Instead, wordless, with nothing to offer that way, Kara lets Lena sink into her, forehead heavy on Kara’s shoulder, and wraps her arms around her.

“I killed my mother.” Lena whispers the words this time, breathes them out into Kara’s neck and Kara wishes she could take the truth of them into herself, to save Lena from carrying it.

She doesn’t want to say it’s okay, because it isn’t. Or to say her mother deserved it, because the idea of someone deserving death still itches at something inside Kara. And those words won’t help something as complex as whatever Lena is feeling anyway. How could they?

Then Lena’s pulling back, but her fingers curl around Kara’s bicep, her face a foot away. “I had the powers. I could have disarmed her. I could have stopped her in a second. The device she had on you wasn’t something she could kill you with.

“Lena…”

“But instead I shot her.”

Kara swallows, the feeling slicing down her throat. “So,” she doesn’t have anything to say, to offer, but Lena is staring at her, wide eyed, as if wanting to will her to understand, “why didn’t you?”

Lena blinks, relaxing a little bit, though the grip on Kara’s arms would be painful if she were human. It’s as if Lena is relieved she’s been asked a hard question, and not just soothed.

“I forgot.” She sucks in a deep breath, and it only wavers just a little. “The powers, it was as if they were slotted into my body and didn’t belong there.” Her voice is hoarse. Like gravel. The exhaustion on her is almost palpable, yet she keeps talking. Like she needs to get this out. “They weren’t something I’ve had years to get used to. Each time I used them, I had to really think about it?” Her eyes are wide, as if needing Kara to get it. “It wasn’t natural for me to speed somewhere. All of us, anyone with the serum, would walk at a normal pace, or wouldn’t fly when it could make sense to, without having to think twice or be told to by my mother or by one of the people in the lab. Our brains didn’t go there naturally.”

Kara sometimes catches herself about to fly when she’s at work, to hover to pick something up off a shelf. To use her strength to help herself. To speed somewhere. Her powers are settled in her, a part of her, even as sometimes they feel anything but natural, still. But she’s used to them.

“And I was getting used to them.” Lena’s grip hasn’t faltered. “They were something I could use without thinking as much. Almost second nature. But I was panicked, a little.” Lena sucks in a breath. “When I saw you on the ground like that, with her standing over you. I just. I wasn’t thinking with my powers. The gun was near my feet. She wouldn’t stop. And you were screaming.”

There could have been the slightest tremble in Lena’s lip, but Kara may have imagined it.

Lena swallows audibly. “You were screaming so loud, it was all I could hear, even with my hearing from the serum. And I just wanted her to stop. To stop everything.”

The silence that descends is almost deafening.

“You did what you had to do.” Kara lets the words fall out, trait, even after thinking just moments ago that she couldn’t offer such useless phrases.

Lena sighs, so softly only Kara would be able to hear her. “I’m still not sure about that.”

So Kara offers something real. “You may never be.”

And Lena nods, once. “I need to sleep.”

Nodding quickly, Kara says, “Of course.”

Kara goes to stand, but is stopped partway, Lena’s hand on her arm. Kara blinks down at her, surprised, their faces too close and Lena’s breath washing over her lips as she tilts her head up.

“Stay with me?”

Kara’s breath catches, and there are so many reasons to say no. Supergirl has things she really should be doing. Her family needs Kara.

But instead she nods. “Of course,” she repeats, her voice low, a timbre she’s never really heard herself use.

Lena stands and tugs Kara through to her bedroom. They need to talk, more, Kara supposes. But that exhaustion is spreading through her again. Lena kicks her shoes off, and all but falls onto the bed in her clothes. Kara pulls her boots off and crawls next to her, on top of the covers and Lena rolls so they’re on the same pillow, their foreheads touching and legs slipping between each other.

That restless feeling is ebbing away to nothing and a heaviness takes over. Lena shifts closer, her face in Kara’s neck, lips just grazing her throat. Closer, she smells like generic shampoo from the hospital.

But under it, still like Lena.

Kara pulls her cape over them both, settling it over their hips and waists.

There’s a breathy sigh against Kara’s pulse point and she blinks slowly at the wall until she hears Lena’s breathing even out, and Kara lets her own do the same.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the final chapter.  
> When I started this one, there was supposed to be another after it, but all the elements kind of came together and then it ended up done? Which makes me pretty sad, as writing this has been such a joy. But also yay, I finished a story.  
> Thank you everyone who has commented and given kudos. It's been great reading all your ideas and thoughts and screaming; you all keep us writers motivated.  
> A huge thanks goes to three awesome people who helped me make this chapter better-I was struggling to get it to come together and it's thanks to them it did.  
> Sincerely, thanks, for coming along on the weird little ride with me :)

Kara wakes up to sun and warmth and to Lena still pressed along the length of her. The shadows on the walls are getting long, sloping down the walls and disappearing into edges. It must be somewhere around early afternoon and while Kara no longer feels swamped with exhaustion, with energy in her limbs and that heaviness gone from her eyelids, she almost wants to go back to sleep again. This bubble can’t last, the world clamours too much, grasps at the two of them, and if this is all Kara can have, for now, she wants it to last. Lena shifts closer, their legs winding more together and her breath washing over Kara’s neck.

Her eyes are just drifting closed, the steady beat of Lena’s heart in her ears lulling her, when her phone beeps from the end of the bed. She wants to ignore it. To let sleep pull her back under and disappear into it. To wake up again in just the same way she has right now.

Except her phone beeps again, the DEO tune, and obligation creeps its way up Kara’s spine. Lena murmurs, her nose pressing into Kara’s neck and slipping even closer, her thigh between Kara’s own. Why does she have to get up?

Limb by limb, she tries to extract herself, Lena’s face still pale and those smudges lingering under her eyes. Her fingers splay over Kara’s spine, holding her down and when her phone beeps again, Kara wants to throw it out the window. She sits up properly, hoping she won’t wake Lena up, and slips off the bed. As quietly as she can, she pulls her phone out of her boot and wonders when she’ll find a more hygienic way of carrying it than there or squished in her bra.

Lena stirs behind her as she swipes her screen open to a message telling her to be there later that afternoon. Once she’s dashed off a reply, thumbs blurred, Kara turns around and Lena is blinking at her.

“Hi.”

Lena sits up, pulling her knees to her chest. “Sorry.”

Kara pauses, at a loss. “Why?”

With a barely audible sound, Lena clears her throat and glances around the room, her gaze going to the clock, then the bed cover. She doesn’t say anything and awkwardness creeps into the spaces between them. The silence is almost thick and everything that’s happened is jammed in this room, something even Kara can’t tear down, her fingers twitching in her lap with the impulse to do so. There’s nothing she wants less than to watch Lena pull away, to disappear behind a carefully erected fence of well-applied lipstick and a cool look.

“Lena…” Kara waits, hoping she’ll meet her eye. She doesn’t.

“I need the bathroom.”

And Lena disappears through a door that Kara assumes goes to an en suite.

Left blinking after her, Kara sits on the bed and waits, never a thing she’s been well versed at. She prefers actions, solving things, moving through them. Left like this, the nails of one finger flick at another, her leg bounces and she gets filled with restlessness.

Unable to stay there, Kara stands up, her cape wrinkled and falling around her, and grabs her boots, carrying them into the living room and clutching them against her chest, toes digging into the carpet. Should she go? Her gaze roves the neat, joined kitchen and living room. Spacious and light. Airy. Everything clean, in its place.

Not a single photograph.

But Kara doesn’t want to go, so instead she drops her boots next to the sofa and walks into the kitchen to figure out Lena’s coffee machine. Doing something is better than doing nothing, and she finds cups and presses buttons and drops in a pod for each of them. Coffee doesn’t do much for Kara, but she enjoys the taste and she enjoys having something to do even more. With the two cups sending spirals of steam up next to her, she sits at the counter on one of the white bar stools, legs kicking, feeling like she could crawl out of her skin. She almost jumps when the door snicks closed in Lena’s bedroom. Her footsteps pause, then start again as she pads out into the living room, stopping in the doorway when she sees Kara.

“You’re still here.” Something flashes over Lena’s face the moment she blurts the words, and Kara wonders if she means to say them at all.

Hovering on her chair, Kara doesn’t know if she should move forward or give Lena space.

She chooses standing, but nothing more. “Of course.”

Lena doesn’t say anything, her expression controlled and she’s watching Kara like she has no idea what she’s doing there. And all Kara can think is how much she likes her like this, without make up, hair in a sloppy bun, and her eyes soft after sleep.

“Do you, uh, want me to go?” She stands. “Because that’s fine, I can totally leave, I—”

“No.” Lena straightens and takes a step. “No, that’s, that’s not what I meant.”

“Oh.”

Kara feels out of step. Unsure. Like she has no idea where to tread. There’s an ocean between them, heaving with the past month, with needy kisses and grabbing fingers, with actions and lies and things that were done in utter desperation. With the memory of a bullet shot at Lena’s head that bounced right off and a bullet that sunk into her mother.

With raw looks and soft breath over Kara’s neck as they slept.

But now?

Throw her in front of an alien three times her size and Kara will jump right in, fists flying.

Put Lena Luthor in front of her, and Kara’s left floundering.

“I’m not very good,” Lena says suddenly, her voice still gravelly with sleep. “At this.” Lena waves her hand around airily, like that explains it all.

Kara just stares at her.

Lena sighs. “I’m not very good, at relationships. Friendships. Any of it.”

The sureness in Lena’s gaze, and the conviction with which she says the words, makes something in Kara ache. She says it like she means it; that she’s bad with people.

“I’ve always enjoyed spending time with you.” Kara steps closer and Lena doesn’t move away. “I think you’re better at it than you think.”

“I’m really not.” That voice is like steel, full of belief.

Kara takes another step, and Lena’s close now. One more step and that gap will be all but gone. Nothing more. Kara has no idea what it is about Lena, why Kara’s always tugged in.

But it’s a question she doesn’t want answered immediately. Kara wants it answered bit by bit, an achingly slow unveiling of how they work together, of who Lena is under all of this. Who they are when they’re together.

“Okay. Then maybe you’re good at me.” Kara smiles then, the words curving her lips up and Lena blinks in surprise at them.

Kara takes that last step forward, and Lena is all she knows then. The warmth from her skin, the smell of her. The eyes that are glued on her own, so unsure, suddenly. Hair has slipped from its elastic, falling around her face, and Kara raises her hand slowly, her fingers grazing Lena’s cheeks as she tucks one of those tendrils behind her ear. She doesn’t drop her hand, but leaves it there like this morning, her palm against Lena’s pulse and fingers brushing the back of her neck.

Lena’s eyes close, slowly, and when they open again, her gaze is glued on Kara’s.

“Why are you here?” she whispers.

And she doesn’t mean right now, just there, Kara knows. She means with Lena, at all.

“Because.” Kara furrows her eyebrows, and wishes Lena could see herself. “I want to be.”

Lena gives the slightest shake of her head. “Why?”

“Because…You’re you. You’re brave. And sure. And good.”

It’s that final word that makes Lena jerk her head back, just slightly. Not enough to pull away from Kara, but enough to show her disgust at that word. The look in Lena’s eye makes Kara feel she’s about to crack open, Kara’s chest tender for the woman in front of her.

“Lena. You are. You are so good.”

The word feels ridiculous, it feels childish, too small, too big, too everything. Yet still, Lena’s recoil from it is like a slap. A roll of the eyes, Kara could maybe understand. But that utter incredulity?

Lena swallows so hard Kara can hear it without trying. She shakes her head once more, her eyes closed again, and Kara doesn’t know how to make her hear it. All she wants is to know what happened, there, the last few weeks with her mother in her head and that serum in her veins. With the knowledge of bombs set off in her name that killed innocents, all for trying to topple her mother’s organisation.

Not only that.

Kara wants to know what happened before. Over the years that stretch behind Lena, that, to Kara’s eyes, look bruised and sensitive, badly healed fractures and fissures through the softest parts of her.

Kara wants to know everything.

She brushes her thumb over Lena’s jaw and Lena’s chin tilts up just a little, lips parting. Kara dips her head, their breath the only thing between them. Unsure, she stays there, Lena’s lips so close to hers. She’s missed it: her kiss, her tongue, the push and pull of Lena’s hands.

But she doesn’t know if it’s what Lena needs. Or more, what she wants.

Until, just barely, Lena presses forward, her lips feather soft again Kara’s.

It feels like the first time—not their first time, in Lena’s office. But a new first time, something wholly different. There’s hesitation in the intention of their mouths, their lips unsure until Lena’s hands come up to grasp fistfuls of cape and suit.

Kara pulls away, just enough to whisper, “You are. Good.” Her lips move over Lena’s as she says it, as if she hopes the physicality of it will help them seep in, brand her somehow with the utter truth of them.

Kara will tell her this every day, if she needs to.

If Lena will let her.

And then Lena’s surging forward again, and any hesitation falls away, Kara’s hand cupping her cheek, her other still around her neck. When Lena’s lips part, her tongue flicking Kara’s top lip, Kara’s groan reverberates in her chest.

Still, she doesn’t feel close enough.

Lena’s tugging her backwards, and they stumble back into the bedroom, Kara’s hands falling to pull at Lena’s shirt. Their clothes are shed, a trail on the floor, mouths falling back to each other as if annoyed by even a second’s separation. Kara’s suit gets in the way and their fingers fumble with the hidden zip until it, too, is on the floor.

Lena’s skin is everything and more than what Kara thought it could be. She’s smooth and soft, with freckles Kara’s tongue can trace and tiny perfect imperfections Kara wants to know every story to.

Her lips graze over Lena’s collarbones and the swell of her breasts, teeth grazing the skin and tongue running over those spots even as Lena asks for more. Lena’s fingers drag through her hair, down her back, nails against her neck.

Kara finds herself, once more, wishing Lena could leave marks on her skin, something tangible for later. Proof of Lena’s touch she can carry for a while.  

Legs shaking, Kara half falls and half sits on the bed, pulling Lena with her. Thighs slip either side of Kara’s hips to straddle her, arms winding around her shoulders.

Her fingers dig into Lena’s hips as they rock against Kara’s stomach. Kara has to remind herself not to press too hard, to loosen her grip. When her hands palm over her hips and grip her ass to pull her in tighter, Lena gasps into her mouth.

Lena’s head falls back, the plane of her neck exposed. Pink is blooming along her skin, a flush crawling along her chest and up her throat. She tastes like salt when Kara runs her tongue along her throat. Lena groans and Kara bites, as gently as she can, right over the spot her pulse is racing, tongue soothing the skin.

Salt and the faintest hint of soap and something that’s just Lena.

Kara runs one hand up Lena’s side, along her ribs, her thumb swiping over a nipple. The groan Lena lets out, the arch of her back, makes Kara abandon her throat. She dips her head, flicking her tongue over her nipple, the skin pebbled and soft in her mouth.

Lena’s hips speed up, her thrusts unrelenting, her breath sharp. She’s wet on Kara’s stomach, the smell of her intoxicating.

Insistent hands push her down on the bed. It would be easy to resist it, but Kara falls backwards and almost whines at the loss of contact, until Lena’s knee pushes between her legs, rocking with a rhythm that matches that set by Kara’s grinding hips. It’s all so fast yet somehow not fast enough, not enough of anything, yet everything feels overwhelming. She’s so wet and Lena’s lips are on her belly. Her hand is where her knee was and fingers tease, teeth scraping her hip bone and Kara gasps.

“Please.” The word tumbles from Kara’s lips before she can stop it.

The last time, it was Lena who said it, frantic and voice low with a desperation that sent licks of fire through Kara’s veins. Now it’s her, almost pleading, and there’s nothing Kara can do to stop it.

It’s all she wants, whatever it is that Lena’s about to give her. She looks down and Lena’s eyes are intent on her own, vividly green from between Kara’s legs. The image alone could almost make her come, her stomach tightening. Then Lena’s fingers slide in and curl and her tongue is on her. Kara has to grasp the blanket to stop herself from moving her hips too hard, too fast, something always in the back of her mind to keep herself controlled.

She feels like she’s being split in half, spread apart in pieces only to be mended back together with the push of Lena’s fingers and the flick of her tongue and the trembling of her own legs. It’s been so long since Kara’s been touched, and it’s never been like this. She’s never felt like she would break if the other person stopped.

Then Lena’s breath washes over her as she moans against Kara, and Kara doesn’t want her that far away anymore. Her fingers tangle in Lena’s hair and Kara tugs her up. Obliging, Lena moves up her body, her fingers still curling, thrusting, and her lips colliding with Kara’s. It’s opened mouth, it’s teeth, it’s tongue and clashing and it’s everything Kara needs. Her nails drag down Lena’s back and her legs wrap around her hips, before she drops her feet back to the bed, heels hard against the mattress. She can feel the pull of Lena’s muscles under her splayed fingers over her back, the pumping of her arm and the rocking of her hips. It’s still too much and not enough. It’s everything.

When Kara comes, it’s with Lena’s mouth on her throat and her head thrown back into the pillow. Their gasping breaths fill the room and Lena collapses on top of her, leaving an open mouthed kiss to the crook of Kara’s neck.

Neither of them moves.

Lena stays, her hand still, her other pushed into the pillow next to Kara’s head, her face hot against Kara’s shoulder. In the room, with the sunlight filtering in, their breathing is ragged, harsh. Kara’s limbs have gone heavy, tingling warmth spreading through each one. She tilts her head, lips brushing Lena’s temple, and Lena pushes up, her lips soft on Kara’s own.

“Hey,” Kara murmurs.

“Hi.” Lena drops back down, her cheeks flushed. “Do I have to move?” When she asks, her lips graze Kara’s ear, who shudders. “I like being here…”

Her fingers shift, just slightly, and Kara shudders again. “Please don’t.”

It’s as if weeks of tension are fading from every muscle and Kara gives a low laugh. Lena’s head comes back up, her hair almost completely fallen out of its bun, a tangled mess Kara longs to make worse.

She quirks an eyebrow. “Something funny?”

Kara shakes her head, fingers trailing through Lena’s hair. “I just thought something terrible.”

Lena’s grinning now. “What’s that?”

There’s heat in Kara’s cheeks, which is ridiculous. “I feel like I’ve needed that since the first time, that day in your office on your desk.”

Her smile grows. “That’s not terrible.” Lena stamps a kiss on her cheek, on her nose and finally on her lips and Kara curves her lips up into it. “It’s all I could think about all day after you left.”

“What is?” Kara knows what, but there’s something delicious in this, whispered words and the smell of them both in the air, Lena’s sweat cooling on Kara’s skin.

“Making you come. How you would look. How you would taste.”

Kara’s cheeks feel like they’re on fire at the words and Lena bites her lip, looking down at her. That fire is a gush of warmth to her centre, her hips rolling and Lena’s fingers curling, drawing a moan from Kara.

Lena’s head drops down, her lips at Kara’s ear. “I can do it again.” Her teeth tug at Kara’s earlobe, grazing the sensitive skin, her tongue flicking over it. She moves her fingers, agonisingly slow. “And again.”

Kara can barely think to answer, and instead rolls them over, pinning Lena’s hands above her head. Lena blinks at her, eyes wide in surprise but lips quirked up in a delighted grin.

“Me first,” Kara says, her mouth already against Lena’s pulse, the skin bounding under her tongue.

Not long afterwards, Lena comes against Kara’s mouth and Kara wonders if she’s ever seen anything more exquisite than Lena Luthor naked and flushed and lost to something Kara gave her.

 

* * *

 

There are so many broken edges to Lena, hidden under that straight-backed stance, the perfect make-up, the smile that can light up a room. Kara watches her walk through the corridors of her company, talk to higher-ups, shake hands and cross her legs like she owns the world, and Kara’s fingers itch with the need to touch her, to find every little broke piece. To run her palms over Lena’s skin and try to smooth all those sharp edges back together.

Sometimes, when Lena’s tongue runs over the curve of Kara’s shoulder blade, her hand between Kara’s legs, she thinks Lena is trying to do the same to her.

And while Kara loses herself in Lena in the few and far between moments she can over the next few weeks, the world seems to be simultaneously falling apart and coming back together, as countless arrests are made. The interrogations and statements Kara, Lena and Jeremiah have to make seem endless. Days and days of meetings and reports. All the while, the news has a field day, painting them all either heroes or the enemy.

They’re obsessed with Lena.

Those questions Kara interrupted during the President’s speech never really go away. Lena’s a martyr. She’s a saint. She’s a villain.

She’s everything in their eyes, and Lena holds her head up during all of it. Kara watches her, as Kara Danvers the reporter and as Kara who is Supergirl, try to rise above it all.

It fades a little, as the news stations find nothing to sink their teeth into, and the spotlight leaves her completely for a while when the highest government official implicated names the Vice President as the biggest player in the conspiracy. All hell really does break loose as the press tries to dig up proof.

It’s on one of those nights that Kara floats down, her boots barely making a sound as she lands next to Lena on the office balcony. Lena’s elbows are on the rail, a glass held delicately in one hand. Her eyes gaze over the city that doesn’t know if it wants to condemn her or celebrate her.

Kara leans next to her, their sides tight together. It’s very late, or very early, the city at the quietest it will ever be, lights twinkling in front of them.

“You smell like smoke.” The ice in Lena’s drink clinks together as she takes a sip.

“Apartment fire on the outskirts.”

“Was everyone okay?”

Kara turns her head, smiling, her gaze on Lena’s profile. She’s always so stunning, so put together. Yet one of Kara’s favourite ways to see her is like this, washed in soft light in the middle of the night. It’s like some guard in her has come down and Kara wishes, right then, that those intent on tearing Lena down, convinced, no matter what evidence they’re shown, that she was on her mother’s side, that they could see her in these small moments: her voice sincere as she asks about people Kara has been saving.

“They were,” Kara says. “No casualties.”

Lena’s lips curve up, and it’s delicate, as it always is in these quieter moments. “Good.”

She turns her head to face Kara, only inches away.

“Hi.”

“Hello.” Lena’s voice is soft.

She’s still pale, almost two weeks later. Those bruises under her eyes less noticeable, but there. She went back to work too soon, has been working night and day to restore the company, to stay afloat. Their stocks plummeted when they destroyed the alien detection device and all its plans.

“I haven’t seen you in a few days,” Kara says.

“You’ve been saving the city, and I’ve been trying to save my company.” Lena twirls the glass, the ice swishing around in the amber liquid. “Or, rather, my image.”

“They’ll come around.” Kara can hear it, the optimism that always laces her words.

Lena’s fingers come up, and she rests them against Kara’s cheek, soft. “Not all of them. Some won’t ever trust me. But they didn’t before, either.”

“They should.”

That delicate look fades and Lena is simply smiling at her. “Thank you.”

It swells, this moment, and Kara is almost breathless with it. Unsure what to do with something that takes all the air like that; she tries to remember the question she thought of; her excuse to come. Not that she really needs it.

“Are you going to be called to any of the trials?” Kara asks.

Lena sighs and takes another sip, turning so her entire body is facing Kara, one elbow on the rail, the glass held loosely. She’s the image of after-work corporate, and Kara would never have known she was so attracted to it. Her eyes fall to the low cut blouse, the buttons left undone, a hint of lace Lena wouldn’t have had out before.

She knew Kara would come.

When Kara glances back up, her cheeks warm even more than they have already to see the small smirk dancing on Lena’s lips. “No. My lawyer assures me it’s unlikely I’ll have to be.”

Kara nods, and Lena’s fingers graze her arm, trail down her bicep and rest against her forearm. She’s looking at Kara from under long lashes, and for a moment, Kara forgets what she was about to say. “Uh—the lawyer that’s representing me through the DEO said the same. They have enough witnesses, enough statements.” Kara bites her lips, then goes for it. “They told me what you did.”

Lena tilts her head. “And what did I do?”

“You made sure they listened to your statements about those who had been coerced, like you.”

Lena’s hand falls from her arm to Kara’s hip, winding around her waist, resting against the small of her back. There’s barely any air between them, and there’s a shadow in Lena’s eye at the word _coerce_. “Well, it needed to be known.”

Kara nods, once. “It did.”

“You mustn’t be missing the protests,” Lena murmurs. And Kara knows an attempt to change the subject when she hears one.

“I don’t. They’ve almost all stopped. With no Cadmus to stand behind, and everyone aware of what they were really doing, their support’s faded.”

“As it should.”

“Is everything alright?”

“Long day.” Lena’s eyes are on her lips and Kara tries not to let that distract her. “A lot of negotiating.”

“I—”

Whatever Kara is going to say is cut off as Lena closes the small gap, kissing Kara with lips that taste like scotch. Lena starts to pull back, like she’s going to keep it short, but Kara slips her finger into a belt loop and tugs, gently, lips parting to deepen kiss.

She’s missed her, and it’s only been a few days since they last saw each other, on a mission from Snapper, Kara hating her job. Rather than doing a hard-hitting interview, they ended up sprawled on Lena’s sofa and later on the floor. Lena messaged her an hour after Kara had left complaining of the rug burn on her knees.

That hand on the small of her back pulls her in flush, and Kara’s breath catches in her chest.

Every time Lena kisses her, Kara feels like she’s been offered something. There’s something fragile in it, no matter how biting Lena’s kisses can be at times. There’s something fragile in Lena, in those broken edges. Between them.

“Can you stay?” Lena asks when she pulls back, her arm wrapped around Kara’s waist, the glass discarded to balance precariously on the rail. Their foreheads rest together and Kara nods.

When Lena smiles, it’s like that fragility melts away. It’s not the grin she uses at work, washed in daylight and washed in the gazes and expectations of snapping reporters and eager employees.

It’s one for Kara.

“Good.”

 

* * *

 

The news outlets get a hold of different stories and run rampant as the trials progress. Snapper has Kara writing a report on the serum’s effects and the use of it against kidnapped aliens during experiments. She sits in a stupor at her desk, collating information and writing it out, pulling up images that just add to the memories already in her head.

Each word is like a drum. The havoc wreaked by her blood, the use it was put to leaves her sick and when she submits the article, she gets up from her desk and disappears outside, taking off into a sky washed by dusk, mind filled with the images of those tortured beings.

She climbs high, as high as she can, and floats amongst the orange and pink. There are streaks of colour that are almost red, and so like that on Krypton her stomach aches.

What would her parents say about the use her blood was put to?

How was her father’s thinking much different when it came to Medusa?

That thought leaves her cold and she suddenly wants to be anywhere else but wrapped in this colour that makes her think of Krypton, of her parents, of a time she’ll never get back and isn’t sure she ever wants to.

She drops like a stone and pulls up above the city, her cape fluttering. There’s something in her throat, something swelling, and the feeling is pushing through her skin, down her limbs, crawling into her chest. She lands on Lena’s balcony just as the sky is fading to an inky blue behind her, lights flickering on one by one.

Of course, Lena’s behind her desk.

She stands at the sound of Kara’s boots, turning and cocking her head to look at her through the glass.

Kara’s shaking, like she could shiver apart right there. She doesn’t know if she wants to bury herself in the distraction, the comfort, of Lena, to let Lena push her against the railing like she had a few days ago and watch her fall to her knees, grinning at the ease with which she could push up the skirt of Kara’s suit, her lips light on her thighs.

She doesn’t know if she wants that, or if she wants to fly away from her.

But she’s come here for a reason. She’s just not sure what that is.

When Lena walks out, there’s a furrow between her brows. She stands feet away, as if unsure if she should come close or give Kara space.

“What’s wrong?”

And Kara feels it then: her lip trembles, and that swollen thing in her throat is about to shatter. She shakes her head. “I—I had to write an article. On the way the serum was used.”

Lena’s expression falters, a little, her eyes flashing. “Oh.”

Kara swallows, and it does nothing to push that lump away. “And I was thinking, you know? What my parents would think of it? But they created Medusa, so…”

“Kara…”

Lena’s voice has a crack in it, and Kara realises it’s mimicking her own.

“Can you come with me?” Kara asks.

Because it all makes sense, finally, this conflicted feeling that she has to want to run away, yet throw herself into Lena at the same time. She needs to be away, out of the city, somewhere with open spaces and where none of this is following her.

But she needs Lena too.

She came to take Lena with her.

And Lena, who always has one thousand things to do, a meeting every hour, lists of calls to make and emails bouncing in her server, nods. “Of course.”

Kara holds out her hand and Lena takes it. They step into each other’s space at the same time and Kara wraps her arms around her, Lena’s arms winding around her neck.

It’s a habit now, and even that quietens Kara’s hypersensitive edges, just a little, the way Lena fits against her, the shape of her known and reassuring. Kara lifts them, slowly and then she’s flying, the wind whipping their hair and the stars crawling out above them. She flies the opposite way she flew that night she was heading to bring down Cadmus and prove to everyone, to herself, even, that Lena was who she said she was.

She doesn’t stop until the night has truly taken over the sky, lowering them down to the sand, nothing stretching out around them but more and more sand.

Lena’s feet sink into the ground and she blinks around. “The middle of the desert?”

“I needed space.”

It’s so still here, and Kara purposefully went somewhere there was barely wind. That feeling in her throat hasn’t gone anywhere, but the press of Lena against her front for twenty minutes has soothed her raw nerves. Just being somewhere without buildings pressing down and where she can really see the stars makes it easier to breathe.

“I missed that,” Lena says.

Kara pauses. “What?”

“Flying.”

Lena looks back down from the stars, and they’re reflected in her iris, a shocking wash of constellations. The image of her in the sky is one hard for Kara to forget, and she imagines the memory of it is even harder to let go off for Lena.

“Do you miss anything else of it?”

Lena bites her lip, then shrugs, something so rare for her that the sight of it makes Kara smile, just a little.

“No.” The light is still dancing in Lena’s eyes. “It was always like fighting against the clock?” When Kara looks confused, Lena, purses her lips, as if trying to figure out how to explain it. “The effects never lasted, and it was like trying to hold on to water. You could feel how they didn’t belong in your body.” Her eyes are cast lower now, and that light’s gone, the shadows Kara wants to chase away hinted at the corners. “But sometimes I still have dreams about it. Flying.”

Her gaze is back on Kara, solid and some of that light is back. “I’ll take you. Whenever you want.”

“I’d like that.” Kara offers her another small smile, that feeling in her throat still there, but easing. Like she knows, Lena asks, “Did you want to talk?”

Kara unclasps her cape and spreads it out on the ground, sitting at one edge and then flopping onto her back.

The sky is neverending and when Lena sits next to her, the sand shifting beneath them, Kara swallows and doesn’t feel as if she’s swallowing down a rage this time.

Lena doesn’t speak. It’s one of the things Kara’s liked discovering over the month that has stretched out after Cadmus fell, that Lena doesn’t push for more, and she doesn’t judge the things that Kara says.

The hectic mess of their lives means their time together is sporadic, spontaneous. They fit in and around each other, and somehow, it’s everything Kara’s needed.

Lena lies down beside her, shoulder warm against her own. She lets the sound of Lena’s heart beat thrum slowly in her ears, her eyes tracing constellations she learned in the beginning on Earth, desperate for something that tasted like home.

And that’s all it takes, for that feeling in her throat to swell again.

“Sometimes,” Kara says, “I’m so angry at my parents. And then I feel guilty, because they’re dead and they sacrificed everything to make sure I was safe. And then I’m angry, again.”

Her voice is like gravel in the back of her throat, low, like it’s trying to pull back the things she’s not supposed to say.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Lena’s head is against her shoulder, the smell of her hair mingling with that of the overheated desert. Above, the sky is black now, splitting wide open with the light of millions of stars.

So Kara talks. Her guilt splits her words into fragments, trips her up. She lets her anger shred them, and by the time she’s running out of words, her voice is broken. Her parents, her blood, Krypton. Earth, and the way Kara has never really felt like she’s belonged. She tries to find a way to make it all make some kind of sense, and fails, for the most part, but it’s cathartic to feel the words rumble out her chest.

And Lena just links their hands between them and blinks up at the stars overhead, absorbing everything Kara says.

When she’s run out of words, she feels empty, wrung out. Lena turns her head, her nose pressed just behind Kara’s ear.

“I grew up as two people,” Lena whispers, rolling her head to look back up, the words disappearing up into the sky. “A Luthor, and whoever I was before that.”

“Do you ever feel like a third? Like a, a mix of the two?”

“All the time.”

Instead of dissecting any of it more, they lay and Kara finally turns her head a little, her lips in Lena’s hair. It’s so quiet, here. If Kara tries to listen, she only hears the sounds of a planet. Of insects moving through the Earth, the wind barely rustling the sand. That heartbeat, that Kara finds she likes to listen to as she falls asleep.

“Lena?”

“Mm?”

“Why didn’t you move? That day, when your mother had the gun to your head?”

For a second, Kara wonders if she’s pushed too hard.

Then, “I needed to know if that was who she really was.”

It hurts, that moment you see the truth of your parents. That kind of truth? Hurts doesn’t even cover it. Kara’s vision of her own parents is still blurred, and probably always will be. Versions she’s held close for years, and versions been shown to her in pieces. Lena’s got the truth of it, enough of it to drown her.

But instead, Lena’s rising.

“Did you always believe I was on your side?” Lena asks, her voice low.

Kara blinks at the question, not what she expected. She pulls back, just a little, the sand shifting under her head.

“No,” she says, and Lena doesn’t even tense. “And yes.”

At that, Lena pushes up onto her elbow, resting her head in her hand and looking down at her. There’s moonlight in her hair and stars as her backdrop and Kara wants to remember her like that, forever. There’s a question in her eyes.

So Kara does her best to answer it.

“I wasn’t sure whose side you were on, not really. It was hard to be, with everything that was happening. But even when I wasn’t sure, every decision I made was based around the fact that you were on our side.”

“Why?”

Lena asks the question like she really doesn’t understand just how Kara had that belief.

“I don’t know.” Kara’s voice is low. “I believed in you.”

That fragile look is back in Lena’s eye, and the kiss she drops on Kara’s lips is faint, as if she’s worried Kara is going disappear. So Kara threads her hands in Lena’s hair and pulls her in tighter and as Lena falls on top of her, an unco-ordinated drop, she laughs into Kara’s mouth, the sound swallowed by the open air and making Kara smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tumblr: gabsrambles
> 
> So, you're all my favourites. This is the end of this fic. From the next chapter are prompts and one shots based within this little universe :) Feel free to send me a prompt on Tumblr or in the comments.


	15. Stolen Moments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was a short piece written before I finished that never fit. You can imagine it's a few months after the end of Whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here are prompts and oneshots based within the word of Whispers. Feel free to send me prompts at tumblr (gabsrambles) or through comments.

“Tell me something no one else knows.”

Lena’s fingers trace the creases in Kara’s palm, deathly soft, a feather. They trail down the inside of her wrist and then back up—slow, a building ache.

“Like what?” Kara asks. Because her mind is blank; it’s a bliss she doesn’t want to give up too easily.

“About you. Your powers.” The words whisper over her ear, like the ones that had started all this, but this time they belong there. They don’t throw Kara for a loop, leaving her thoughts a mess. Instead they go deep and stay. A sensation she can bring up another day, when weeks pass before she gets the chance to feel like this again.

Because both of their lives are a mess. A chaotic mesh of simply taking on too much, far too many responsibilities. These moments are so few and far between.

Yet every time, she can’t help but think the wait is worth it. When she manages to slip into Lena’s office for lunch and Lena’s shoulder relax a little, a smile lighting up her face at the sight of Kara. A night like tonight, in which Kara settled on Lena’s balcony and found her waiting. Lena didn’t even have to ask before Kara lifted them both into the sky and flew far away, into the desert and onto a blanket she’d left there the last time.

No one comes to this place.

Kara hums an answer, her eyes stay closed. Lena kisses her neck, just below her ear and Kara’s lips curve up. If she opened her eyes, she’d see an explosion of stars overhead; but she doesn’t need that, that taste of space, that itch to be in an entirely different universe. Not with Lena wrapped along her side, her nose nuzzling her neck and sweat cooling on her skin. “My powers?”

She feels Lena shrug. “I just want a secret.”

“You have my biggest.”

Lena chuckles, the sound warm and soft like butterscotch. Smooth. “Lots of people have that.”

Kara’s eyes open, and she was right: the stars blaze overhead, constellations spilling through all the space to dazzle her. “Hey.” She’s indignant, but even that sounds languid. “Not lots of people.”

Lena’s breath huffs against her cheek, and Kara can feel them quirk up into that grin that’s made her stomach flutter since she first met Lena with Kal-el at her side. “Sure.”

Eyes closed again, Kara sighs. “A secret.”

“Yeah.”

The silence stretches on and here, in the desert, Kara could happily stay forever. It’s a blanket of a haven, nothing but them, the sky, the sand and the rustling sound of the breeze. Right now, it feels as if nothing can touch them. The truth of what’s happened and their actions are far away. Not related to the two sprawled out with the cooling sand on a blanket in a random location in the desert.

“When I arrived, with these…these powers, they didn’t feel like a gift.” Her voice is raw, hoarse. From the sounds Lena had coaxed out of her with the desert air licking at their skin, but now also from talking about something so deep down inside of her. “Not for a long time. And, and I kind of think they never have.”

“What do you mean?”

It’s why Kara loves being with Lena. She’s honest, to Kara, she asks when she wants more information. She doesn’t judge, just seeks more.

“I hated it. Sometimes.” She’s whispering, now, letting her words float up to get lost in the sky. “I don’t know how to explain it, what it was like. I was so…alone, when I arrived. I was so sad. And then my body just felt…wrong. Everything felt wrong. Nothing was normal.” Kara measures her words, unsure how to explain what else she could say. “It’s like when you’re a teenager and suddenly your hips are bigger, your breasts are bigger—you feel large, like you’ve been stuffed into a body that’s not yours. I felt like that. I was—I felt pulled tight. Powerful. My hands felt heavy, but I could accidentally pick up the car when I tried to open the door. I couldn’t grab something without breaking it. I was scared to hug Alex. I sneezed and froze the neighbour’s cat.” Kara looks up again, eyes tracing patterns in the stars, ones she pretends are the same as the ones from Krypton. They don’t belong here, she’s inventing their presence. “I really liked that cat.”

The silence is humming around them and Lena pushes up onto her elbow and looks down at her. Kara has no idea why, but there are tears falling down her cheeks and spilling into her hair.

“They don’t always feel like a gift,” Kara says, and she tastes salt on her lips. “But I don’t feel like me without them anymore.

Lena blinks, heavy and slow and when she kisses Kara, she tastes like understanding.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: i imagine that serving Cadmus was a pretty traumatic experience for Lena. i'd love to see Kara comforting her and taking care of her after she wakes up from a nightmare, and after something triggers her into a panic attack/flashback

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: Abuse/torture

Lena’s wrists are stuck at her side. Stuck to a bed? No. To a gurney, cold metal biting into her back through the thin cotton she’s wearing. She tries to lift them to hit away whoever is sticking that sharp needle into her arm, but nothing happens. Instead, something cuts into the delicate skin there, bites at the softness of her wrists, grates against the bones there as she tugs and yanks and tries to free them.

Kicking. She can kick. But when she tries to lift her legs, to kick out, to twist her body so she can get the person in the face, break his nose, send him flying so he’ll stop, the same feeling cuts coldly into her ankle and her heart hammers against her ribs, her blood pounding in her ears when she realises she’s completely restrained and they’re injecting _something_.

Everything is black. Why can’t she see? This isn’t right. She could always see when this was happening. But now it’s all black and there’s just the slicing pain at her ankles and wrists and the sound of her heart in her ears, the blood rushing, her desperate breaths a background beat. There’s a smell, something sour. Sweat and blood. A copper tang in the air. Is it hers? It hadn’t been. She knows this. It hadn’t been her blood. Before, it had been others. Experimented on and torn apart for an aim Lena could never understand.

But now it’s hers. She has no idea how she knows it, but it’s hers, this time around.

A needle’s still jabbing into her arm. The metal under her back never seems to soak up her warmth, it somehow just feels colder than at the start when she’d lain down on.

Because she had, voluntarily. Hadn’t she?

So why can she remember, this time around, hands pushing at her shoulders, the back of her head hitting the metal with a clang. That wasn’t how it happened.

It happened with her mother standing in front of a monitor. A device in her hand, beeping and flashing red and a reminder of the people killed the last time Lena had tried to resist.

That’s how it happened.

The restraining had come the next time.

But not this time. Is she back here? It’s too black to see. She left, didn’t she? She got out. Kara came and she got her out.

Kara always comes.

But there’s no Kara here. There’s Lena, cold and alone and unable to move, a scream catching in her throat, shredding it raw, and a needle that feels more like burning in her arm.

Then there’s someone next to her ear. She can feel them. The soft brush of a cheek, the subtle perfume that reeks when layered with the stench of this place. Or maybe it’s just _her_ that smells like that.

But her mother is dead.

Lena knows, because it was her who killed her. Who lifted a gun while Kara writhed in agony on the floor, her skin red and veins popping in her neck and a scream wrenching from her mouth while Lena’s mother had looked almost maniacal at her own actions. Gleaming eyes and words that were lies she threw down in front of Lena so easily.

But her mother is here, her lips against Lena’s ear and she tries to twist her head away but then fingers dig into Lena’s scalp and hold her still.

“Keep moving, and we blow up that school.”

Lena, tense, strung like a blow, stops trying to kick, to pull away. She freezes, her blood like ice in her veins, layering over her tissue.

School. Bomb. Children.

A second bomb.

Except there already was a second bomb. Lena tried to stop it all. To resist. And her mother blew it up. 

But apparently not. Apparently it can all happen again.

Lena doesn’t move and she can _feel_  her mother smile.

“There’s a good girl.”

That needle is back and then the ice is gone and there’s fire, licking through her insides, burning her up and that scream is no longer caught in her throat, but it still shreds it raw as it tears out of her, that damn serum wreaking havoc on her cells, on the very core of her.

“Wake up.”

Those lips are next to her ear again and Lena wants them to go away. She wants her mother to go, the feeling sick in her gut that she isn’t sad she shot her. But if she murdered her mother, why is she still here, whispering things to her she can’t have?

“Lena, please, wake up.”

And she does, ripping out of the dream like she’s sitting up under water, her lungs dragging in air, legs kicking and panic seizing her again when they don’t move. A sheet is wrapped tight around them and she rips them free, just because she  _can_ and the room is dark. But not dark like where she just was, but dim, the curtains open and moonlight spilling in, the shadows familiar. Shivering, clammy, Lena’s fingers ache where they clasp the blanket under her.

“Lena.” 

Her name is said like a prayer, a gasp, a rush of consonants and vowels and that voice is everything, just then, as she realises that voice means she’s not _there_  but here.

“Kara.” Lena’s  voice is hoarse, like it’s being spilled from a throat that really is raw from screaming.

Why are her cheeks wet?

And then she turns and Kara is right there, hair almost silver in this light, like the light from the sky can’t help but want to touch her, There’s a furrow between her brow and she’s basically hovering, as if all she wants is to touch Lena, but knows she needs to wait.

It’s a ritual, by now, for Kara to pull her out and be there when she does.

As soon as their eyes catch, Kara reaches forward, her fingers trembling slightly, and her thumbs brush over Lena’s cheeks, wiping away the evidence of what Lena’s been carrying for months.

Her breathing is still too ragged. Too harsh in her ears. Lena would swear she can still feel metal around her wrists, her mothers voice hissing right next to her head. The guilt twisting in her stomach of a bomb that she was the cause of. Twice. The burn of the serum, the way it felt like it tore her apart even as it knitted something together.

But Kara is there, patient and slow to touch, just like Lena needs her to be. And, finally, Lena sucks in a shuddering breath she manages to hold and lets her forehead fall against Kara’s, who quickly slips a hand behind Lena’s neck to hold her there, fingers soft but sure, grounding.

Everything that Lena needs.

She always is.

“Shall we go?” 

Kara’s words murmur over her lips, her breath warm and soft and when Lena drops her head into the crook of Kara’s neck, she smells like citrus. Like soap from Lena’s shower. Like sweat, but nothing sour about it. Sweat from hours ago, when the two of them had fallen into bed after busy days apart, skin slick together and Kara’s breath panting in her ear.

Lena nods, her head rubbing against Kara’s skin and then arms are around her and they’re out the window and up in the sky, high above the city. The lights twinkle under them, but Lena only has eyes for the stars overhead, washing the sky, and for the way they settle in Kara’s eyes, speckle over her skin.

The night is warm, the breeze balmy and filled with heat.

And here, in Kara’s arms, they stay with the openness of the sky above, Kara’s lips brushing under her ear, and in her hair, until Lena feels like she can breathe again.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: someone wanted Alex/the gang/Lena interaction, and I kind of owe everyone something a little lighter.

Lena can have utter control in a situation.

She can steeple her fingers against a glass table during a board meeting, lean forward just so, and demand every single person’s attention with an arch of her eyebrows. Anyone who questioned her when she started, so young, so fresh faced, her name all they thought was propping her up, quickly learned to shut the hell up and do what they were told.

Because Lena knows what she’s doing. There, a world of power games and subtle moves, she walks with ease, the heel of her impractical shoes sinking deep and sturdy with each step. A parry, a side step, a thrust the other never sees coming, sliding a blade of words or decisions between their ribs.

A proverbial chess game.

That she understands. She rises up as if she was born to it. As if bred just to do so.

She may not have been born to it. Nor bred.

She’d have no idea, her biological parents a question that hang over her head, that haunt her with the faintest memory of fingers that rested between tiny, bony shoulder blades when she was ill, cool hands soothing flaming hot skin.

Not born to it. Born to what, she doesn’t know.

But she _was_ raised to.

She can’t escape that.

Hatred may twist with guilt about her mother in her belly on a daily basis, but she still can’t run from that fact. Lillian Luthor had known how to play her. She always had. But since that gun was clasped in Lena’s clammy hand, she still hasn’t been able to deny her childhood.

The way she knows business like she knows her own name.

But this?

 _This_ she doesn’t know.

“It’ll be fun.”

Lena swallows and plasters on a smile, nodding like she means it. “I’m sure.”

But Kara just cocks her head like she sees right through her. That smile that used to work wonders, for years and years, and now it always falls apart under blue eyes torn by the sky.

“Come on.” Kara’s hand’s on the doorknob and Lena has to resist the temptation to grab it and pull it into her stomach, lacing their fingers together. To cock her head and grin at the way Kara goes a little weak kneed. To suggest they go back to Lena’s and be alone. Or to a bar. Or somewhere that isn’t here. “It _will_ be fun. There’re games and snacks. And even whiskey.”

It’s that final word that makes Lena nod. But Kara, instead of twisting the handle and pushing the door open like Lena expects her to, drops her hand and is suddenly all in Lena’s space. Which is all it takes to make Lena’s breath hitch. Her back hits the wall behind them and Kara’s pressed up against her and suddenly it’s _Lena_ that’s weak kneed and wondering what’s happened.

This occurs far too often. Something will happen and Lena thinks she has the upper hand, but then Kara quirks a smile at her or bites her lip just so and Lena can’t remember how to breathe, let alone how to arch an eyebrow and act like she owns the room. Warm breath washes over Lena’s lips and Kara’s eyes are just so _blue_ Lena could probably write far too many poems in her head about then that she would never let see the light of day. With a dip of her head, just a slight one, Kara rubs the tip of her nose over Lena’s.

“If you don’t want to,” she whispers. “If you’re not ready…we can go.”

And Lena melts, a little. Because of course Kara didn’t just accept her hesitant yes and is actually making sure she means it. And before Lena can answer, hands are threading through her hair and Kara’s lips are on hers.

The kiss starts slow. Almost chaste. Gentle, with subtle movement. But then Lena’s fingers grasp at Kara’s shirt and Kara gives the softest of moans, her lips parting and her tongue brushing Lena’s. And that fist of material is tugged on and their flush together, Kara’s tongue in her mouth and Lena’s dizzy with it all, their legs slipping together. Kara rocks her hips, just slightly, right there in the hallway and Lena wonders if she even realises she’s done it.

Months of this. Nearly six of them.

And Lena’s still utterly dizzy with it all.

Does Kara get what she does to her?

Lena still wakes up with the ghost of nightmares clinging to her eyelashes, throat raw from a scream and fingers aching from scrabbling at bed sheets.

And Kara is there, almost every time.

Once, she wasn’t, and Lena pulled her knees to her chest and tried to calm the shaking in her fingers. To settle her racing heart, a flutter in her chest that made it impossible to breathe right. But then there was the softest of knocks at her window. Lena jumped, then stood, feet sinking into the plush carpet and behind her curtain, Kara floated. Hair the messy bun on the top of her head she uses when asleep, just in her pyjamas and socks. Still trembling, Lena reached out and when the window was open, Kara swallowed.

“I heard you.”

It should have been creepy, but instead it was a moment that Lena started to realise that Kara wasn’t going anywhere.

It’s a strange feeling, to not be waiting for someone to disappear. For their support to slip through her fingers. To not expect the slap of betrayal, of being left behind.

Lena has spent so many years steeling herself for it all that she has no idea what to do with Kara and her unwavering support.

Her _goodness_.

When Kara pulls back from this kiss, Lena chases her, a whine in the back of her throat. Kara smiles, stamps the motion onto Lena’s lips with a final kiss, her hands still threaded in Lena’s hair. Those dark lashes cast shadows on her cheeks. Her skin is tanned, glowing. Kara carries the sun in her hair, along her skin. You’d think she is the sun itself, until you see her bathed in starlight, eyes filled with a longing Lena thinks may never leave her as she stares up at an endless space.

“I mean it,” Kara husks, the tone enough to make Lena want to lean back into her kiss. “We can go do more of this, instead. I wouldn’t exactly be opposed.”

She would leave, too. Kara would do it so easily, despite her need for her friends. For her sister. The slow integration of them all together.

Lena shakes her head, fingers grasping just a little tighter, Kara smiling when it brought them even harder together. “No. I want to.”

One last kiss, then Kara is turning, their fingers laced together. She opens the door and Lena sucks in a breath and suddenly people are calling out greetings and every single person in the room lights up simply at the sight of Kara.

They’ve been warned Lena is coming. There’s the tall one, James, who Lena knows Kara used to date and crushed on for months on end, and there’s the one who tells a lot of jokes, Winn. Kara’s sister is there, and while everyone else still smiles at Lena almost with the same level of beam as at Kara, hers wavers, just slightly. Lessens. Her girlfriend, on the other hand, widens her grin and hands over a tumbler of whiskey that Lena takes like a life line.

There may even be a wink thrown at her.

Of course, Lena knows everyone. She’s met them when she’s swung by CatCo to meet Kara, or at her apartment. But this kind of…integration, is new.

They’re loud, and familiar with each other. They all move like fluid, in and out of each other’s space in a way that leaves a pang in Lena’s stomach. There were times boarding school came close to this, but never for long.

Mostly, it sits like something foreign on her tongue.

She watches them throw smiles around as easily as they take breath, ask questions, sit next to each other. Alex shoves Winn’s shoulders and he rubs at it like it actually hurt and her eye roll draws a deep laugh from Kara. There are in-jokes and talk of work, and Maggie makes a comment about a gun Alex is apparently in love with, a grin so affectionate on her lips that Lena wonders if Maggie is going to crack open from it.

They eat pizza and Lena throws Maggie another thankful smile when she tops up Lena’s glass. Everything is warm and when games are pulled out and she asks how the starting one’s played, everyone blinks at her in surprise and she feels her cheeks go hot.

Kara is never far away, the entire night, a hand on the small of Lena’s back or hovering close by.

“Charades?” Winn asks.

Lena isn’t completely ignorant. She’s seen the game played on TV and such but hasn’t ever participated. If it wasn’t educational, her parents didn’t allow it. Chess, yes. Scrabble occasionally. Reading.

The boarding school certainly didn’t encourage such things.

She swallows and her grip tightens on her glass.

James quickly grins, and explains the game in a rumbling voice.

She’s going to be terrible at this.

It turns out she’s right, but no one really cares because so is Maggie, and Kara is mostly exuberance and flailing limbs, which Lena finds more adorable than she probably should. At one point, she turns slightly to find Alex watching her watch Kara, a look on her face Lena doesn’t entirely understand.

It’s hours later that Alex corners her in the kitchen while Lena’s pouring a drink.

“Hey.”

Alex cocks her head, her arms crossed, leaning back against the counter. “Hi.”

Lena straightens her shoulders. Because this?  This she _can_ do. A quick sweep of her gaze confirms Kara is still sprawled on the couch laughing at something James has said. She looks so content. And also distracted.

“Is there a problem, Alex?”

She keeps her voice low, her gaze on the brown eyes staring straight at her.

And then something happens that Lena hasn’t expected. Alex’s face goes soft, her eyes going to Kara and then back to Lena.

“I—I owe you an apology.”

Lena blinks. “Oh.”

Alex has never been _rude_ , exactly.

It’s been six months of upheaval. Of weirdness. Of returned fathers and murdered mothers and clawing back to positions in society and government crisis and plummeting stock and other things that still make a tremble appear in Lena’s fingers to think about.

Things she thought she was done with but isn’t.

So Alex has never been rude. But with everything, they’ve never had a real chance to speak or get close. Kara and Lena barely have time for each other, let alone for…this. For the fun of games nights and meet-the-friends. It means that Alex was always eyeing her off and they smiled kind of politely at each other while Kara looked on a little obliviously.

And now here they are.

They blink at each other some more.

Finally, Alex clears her throat. “I, uh. Well, I never believed you were on our side, while you were gone.”

Six months. It’s been six months and still Lena struggles to think back to all of that.

So she focuses on the intent in Alex’s words. She doesn’t know how to tell her that she’s not remotely surprised.

“And when it was over, and my dad was back…he told me things. How you two worked together to bring them down. That she—that you were, were punished, trying the first time.”

An explosion Lena had no visual of beyond a TV screen. But one that haunts her none the less. One that sits heavy on her shoulders.

Alex takes a small step closer and Lena has to resist the urge to step back. She’s used to Kara in her space.

But not others.

“But I still didn’t trust you.”

Lena lifts her chin. “I could tell as much.”

“And, well, I’m sorry.”

“What for?”

“Because Kara trusted you. My father trusted you. You’d proven you could be trusted. But I just…”

And her eyes flit away again, towards the sofa, towards her sister.

“You were protecting her,” Lena says.

Alex nods, her gaze back on Lena’s, eyes blazing. “Kara is my _sister_. And I was…worried. And the fact that you two seemed so…secretive, I took a while to realise.”

Slow. And quiet. They didn’t mean to be secretive. But the downfall of Cadmus didn’t fix everything—in many ways, it caused more problems. Brought everything to the surface.

“Realise what?”

“That you’re one of the good guys.”

Lena opens her mouth, then closes it again. For some reason, heat is crawling up her neck.

“Even I’m not so sure about that,” Lena murmurs.

Alex smiles then, and Lena finally sees it, why Maggie looks at her like she’s the sun and Kara would drop everything if she calls.

“Well,” Alex says. “I am.”

“Oh.” Lena isn’t sure when her eloquence left her.

“So.” Alex nods and slips her hands into her back pockets. “Just so, this isn’t confused—I _will_ end you if you hurt her. Slowly. I’ve been known to be able to do it with my index finger.”

She holds it up in between them and all Lena can think of has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with a finger banging joke.

So she cocks her head. “Well, you _are_ a lesbian.”

It’s worth it to watch red flood Alex’s cheeks and drop her hand looking partly amused and partly aghast at herself.

“I walked right into that.”

Lena nods and takes a sip of her whiskey. “You really did.”

“I mean it though.”

“I know.”

It holds less punch when she’s still bright red, but Lena tries to look like she’s taking it seriously.

Alex grabs her drink off the counter, filled with the same whiskey as Lena’s, and holds it up. “Glad we have an understanding.”

Lena, mind still a little numb at the sincerity at Alex’s _I am_ , clinks her own to it. They share a drink, and then Alex gestures with a nod and a still slightly sheepish grin that they join the others. Lena, feeling weirdly light, walks after her. When she sits next to Kara, an arm slides around Lena’s back, the muscle in Kara’s arm flexing and the heat of her flooding Lena’s system. Maggie’s hand slides over Alex’s thigh when Alex perches on the arm of the chair she’s in and Winn makes a joke that James throws popcorn at him for and makes Kara cover her mouth as she gives a loud laugh.

And, an hour later, Lena’s back where she started but in her own house. Her back against her door, the sound of it slamming shut as she was pushed against it still echoing. Kara’s lips are warm against her neck, teeth scraping over her pounding pulse and hands are already under her shirt, nails scraping at her skin.

A gasp falls from her mouth and she threads her fingers into Kara’s hair, unsure if she wants to hold her where she is or drag her to her mouth.

“Was that so bad?” Kara breathes into her ear.

And Lena shakes her head.

It really wasn’t.

 


End file.
